Detecting What Matters: A Novel Approach for Out-of-Distribution 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) use object detection models to recognize their surroundings and make driving decisions accordingly. Conventional object detection approaches classify objects into known classes, which limits the AV's ability to detect and appropriately respond to Out-of-Distribution (OOD) objects. This problem is a significant safety concern since the AV may fail to detect objects or misclassify them, which can potentially lead to hazardous situations such as accidents. Consequently, we propose a novel object detection approach that shifts the emphasis from conventional class-based classification to object harmfulness determination. Instead of object detection by their specific class, our method identifies them as either 'harmful' or 'harmless' based on whether they pose a danger to the AV. This is done based on the object position relative to the AV and its trajectory. With this metric, our model can effectively detect previously unseen objects to enable the AV to make safer real-time decisions. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model effectively detects OOD objects, evaluates their harmfulness, and classifies them accordingly, thus enhancing the AV decision-making effectiveness in dynamic environments.