{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/using-a-waffle-iron-for-automotive-point","title":"Using a Waffle Iron for Automotive Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation","arxiv_id":"2301.10100","date":"2023-01-24","proceeding":"ICCV 2023 1","authors":["Gilles Puy","Alexandre Boulch","Renaud Marlet"],"abstract":"Semantic segmentation of point clouds in autonomous driving datasets requires techniques that can process large numbers of points efficiently. Sparse 3D convolutions have become the de-facto tools to construct deep neural networks for this task: they exploit point cloud sparsity to reduce the memory and computational loads and are at the core of today's best methods. In this paper, we propose an alternative method that reaches the level of state-of-the-art methods without requiring sparse convolutions. We actually show that such level of performance is achievable by relying on tools a priori unfit for large scale and high-performing 3D perception. In particular, we propose a novel 3D backbone, WaffleIron, made almost exclusively of MLPs and dense 2D convolutions and present how to train it to reach high performance on SemanticKITTI and nuScenes. We believe that WaffleIron is a compelling alternative to backbones using sparse 3D convolutions, especially in frameworks and on hardware where those convolutions are not readily available.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.10100v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10100v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"using-a-waffle-iron-for-automotive-point","repo_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/waffleiron","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"NOASSERTION"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"3d-semantic-segmentation","task_name":"3D Semantic Segmentation"},{"task_slug":"autonomous-driving","task_name":"Autonomous Driving"},{"task_slug":"lidar-semantic-segmentation","task_name":"LIDAR Semantic Segmentation"},{"task_slug":"robust-3d-semantic-segmentation","task_name":"Robust 3D Semantic Segmentation"},{"task_slug":"semantic-segmentation","task_name":"Semantic Segmentation"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[{"leaderboard":"/sota/3d-semantic-segmentation-on-semantickitti","task":"3D Semantic Segmentation","dataset":"SemanticKITTI","model":"WaffleIron","rank_in_archive_order":12,"of":45,"metrics":{"test mIoU":"70.8%","val mIoU":"68.0%"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/lidar-semantic-segmentation-on-nuscenes","task":"LIDAR Semantic Segmentation","dataset":"nuScenes","model":"WaffleIron","rank_in_archive_order":33,"of":36,"metrics":{"val mIoU":"0.791"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/robust-3d-semantic-segmentation-on","task":"Robust 3D Semantic Segmentation","dataset":"SemanticKITTI-C","model":"WaffleIron","rank_in_archive_order":14,"of":22,"metrics":{"mean Corruption Error (mCE)":"109.54%"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/robust-3d-semantic-segmentation-on-nuscenes-c","task":"Robust 3D Semantic Segmentation","dataset":"nuScenes-C","model":"WaffleIron","rank_in_archive_order":8,"of":12,"metrics":{"mean Corruption Error (mCE)":"106.73%"},"uses_additional_data":false}],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2301.10100","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2301.10100","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2301.10100"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/valeoai/waffleiron","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"NOASSERTION"}},{"provenance":"deterministic:regex_extraction","url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"NOASSERTION"}}],"summary":{"ran":5},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":5,"ran":5,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":5,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"a0e8570817b4637b","entry":"ChannelMix","repo":"valeoai/WaffleIron","repo_kind":"official","path":"waffleiron/backbone.py","file_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron/blob/HEAD/waffleiron/backbone.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NOASSERTION","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"a0e8570817b4637b"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"e058da1955e6f991","entry":"DropPath","repo":"valeoai/WaffleIron","repo_kind":"official","path":"waffleiron/backbone.py","file_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron/blob/HEAD/waffleiron/backbone.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NOASSERTION","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"e058da1955e6f991"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"bcd5549e0a9e9795","entry":"SpatialMix","repo":"valeoai/WaffleIron","repo_kind":"official","path":"waffleiron/backbone.py","file_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron/blob/HEAD/waffleiron/backbone.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NOASSERTION","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"bcd5549e0a9e9795"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"1909163ca33c7313","entry":"WaffleIron","repo":"valeoai/WaffleIron","repo_kind":"official","path":"waffleiron/backbone.py","file_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron/blob/HEAD/waffleiron/backbone.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NOASSERTION","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"1909163ca33c7313"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"8255e8a4188c8617","entry":"myLayerNorm","repo":"valeoai/WaffleIron","repo_kind":"official","path":"waffleiron/backbone.py","file_url":"https://github.com/valeoai/WaffleIron/blob/HEAD/waffleiron/backbone.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"NOASSERTION","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"8255e8a4188c8617"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}