Autonomous driving paper index

Cracks in the vision system: Vandalism-induced occlusion attacks in autonomous vehicles

2026-07-14 · Machine Learning with Applications

autonomous drivingautonomous vehicleobject detectionperception

One-line summary

This paper proposes a novel physical adversarial attack called the Vandalism-induced Occlusion Attack (VOA) that can be employed by adversaries to compromise the ML-based perception systems in AVs.

Engineering notes

We develop multiple VOA attack vectors and evaluate their impact on state-of-the-art object detection models in AVs.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充:本站会优先为端到端自动驾驶、BEV感知、3D目标检测、轨迹预测、路径规划、LiDAR感知等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) rely on machine learning (ML) models for real-time perception and decision-making. However, these models are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, particularly physical-world occlusions, caused by environmental interference or malicious intent; many of which stem from vandalism on AVs due to personal and political agendas. This paper proposes a novel physical adversarial attack called the Vandalism-induced Occlusion Attack (VOA) that can be employed by adversaries to compromise the ML-based perception systems in AVs. We develop multiple VOA attack vectors and evaluate their impact on state-of-the-art object detection models in AVs. Experimental results reveal that structured VOAs such as bottom-top lead to the least degradation in performance, with YOLOv8l maintaining an F1-score of 0.80 and YOLOv5x reaching 0.78 at 30% severity. In contrast, unstructured VOAs like random or targeted attacks cause substantial performance drops-Faster R-CNN's F1-score falls as low as 0.09 under targeted occlusion. These findings underscore the need for VOAaware training and robust feature extraction strategies in AV perception systems.

5.0Engineering value
8.0Research novelty
5.0Business relevance

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