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Main Authors: Zhou, Ji, Ding, Yilin, Zhao, Yongqi, Xu, Jiachen, Eichberger, Arno
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22830
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author Zhou, Ji
Ding, Yilin
Zhao, Yongqi
Xu, Jiachen
Eichberger, Arno
author_facet Zhou, Ji
Ding, Yilin
Zhao, Yongqi
Xu, Jiachen
Eichberger, Arno
contents Reliable environmental perception remains one of the main obstacles for safe operation of automated vehicles. Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) concerns safety risks from perception insufficiencies, particularly under adverse conditions where conventional detectors often falter. While Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) demonstrate promising semantic reasoning, their quantitative effectiveness for safety-critical 2D object detection is underexplored. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of ten representative LVLMs using the PeSOTIF dataset, a benchmark specifically curated for long-tail traffic scenarios and environmental degradations. Performance is quantitatively compared against the classical perception approach, a YOLO-based detector. Experimental results reveal a critical trade-off: top-performing LVLMs (e.g., Gemini 3, Doubao) surpass the YOLO baseline in recall by over 25% in complex natural scenarios, exhibiting superior robustness to visual degradation. Conversely, the baseline retains an advantage in geometric precision for synthetic perturbations. These findings highlight the complementary strengths of semantic reasoning versus geometric regression, supporting the use of LVLMs as high-level safety validators in SOTIF-oriented automated driving systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_22830
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Comparative Evaluation of Large Vision-Language Models for 2D Object Detection under SOTIF Conditions
Zhou, Ji
Ding, Yilin
Zhao, Yongqi
Xu, Jiachen
Eichberger, Arno
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
Reliable environmental perception remains one of the main obstacles for safe operation of automated vehicles. Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) concerns safety risks from perception insufficiencies, particularly under adverse conditions where conventional detectors often falter. While Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) demonstrate promising semantic reasoning, their quantitative effectiveness for safety-critical 2D object detection is underexplored. This paper presents a systematic evaluation of ten representative LVLMs using the PeSOTIF dataset, a benchmark specifically curated for long-tail traffic scenarios and environmental degradations. Performance is quantitatively compared against the classical perception approach, a YOLO-based detector. Experimental results reveal a critical trade-off: top-performing LVLMs (e.g., Gemini 3, Doubao) surpass the YOLO baseline in recall by over 25% in complex natural scenarios, exhibiting superior robustness to visual degradation. Conversely, the baseline retains an advantage in geometric precision for synthetic perturbations. These findings highlight the complementary strengths of semantic reasoning versus geometric regression, supporting the use of LVLMs as high-level safety validators in SOTIF-oriented automated driving systems.
title A Comparative Evaluation of Large Vision-Language Models for 2D Object Detection under SOTIF Conditions
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22830