Snow-accumulation effects on smaller non-rigid targets

Determine whether physical snow accumulation produces similar geometric enhancements for smaller non-rigid targets, such as pedestrians and postboxes, or whether atmospheric attenuation dominates for targets with smaller cross-sections.

Background

The reported experiments focus on labeled cars in the WADS-3D and CADC datasets. The observed improvement in detection under heavier snowfall is attributed primarily to snow-related increases in vehicle point count and possible surface accumulation. It remains unresolved whether the same geometric enhancement occurs for smaller, non-rigid objects, whose reduced cross-sections may make them more vulnerable to atmospheric attenuation. The authors identify targeted data collection as necessary to investigate this question.

References

First, we will evaluate whether physical snow accumulation yields similar geometric enhancements for smaller, non-rigid targets (e.g., pedestrians and postboxes) or if atmospheric attenuation dominates for smaller cross-sections, necessitating targeted data collection.

— Beyond the Snowflakes: Disentangling Weather Effects from Confounding Meta-Factors in LiDAR Object Detection  (2610.13891 - Yang et al., 9 Oct 2026) in Section V-B, Future Work