Welcome to the code archive for our review paper: Open World Object Detection: A Survey
Exploring new knowledge is a fundamental human ability that can be mirrored in the development of deep neural networks, especially in the field of object detection. Open world object detection (OWOD) is an emerging area of research that adapts this principle to explore new knowledge. It focuses on recognizing and learning from objects absent from initial training sets, thereby incrementally expanding its knowledge base when new class labels are introduced.
We conclude most existing Open World Object Detection (OWOD) methods in literature and archive their codes in this repository covering essential aspects, including, benchmark datasets, source codes, evaluation results, and a taxonomy of existing methods.
Pseudo-labeling-based methods adopt the pseudo-labeling technique to select unknown objects during the training process. They usually use a self-defined objectness score to measure whether the selected region contains an object or not. Object proposals with the top-k objectness scores and that do not match with known categories will be pseudo-labeled as unknown objects.
Towards Open World Object Detection
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2021/html/Joseph_Towards_Open_World_Object_Detection_CVPR_2021_paper.html
- Venue: CVPR 2021
- Code: https://github.com/JosephKJ/OWOD
OW-DETR: Open-World Detection Transformer
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2022/html/Gupta_OW-DETR_Open-World_Detection_Transformer_CVPR_2022_paper.html
- Venue: CVPR 2022
- Code: https://github.com/akshitac8/OW-DETR
Fast OWDETR: transformer for open world object detection
- Paper: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/162462
- Code: https://github.com/luckychay/Fast-OWDETR
Open World DETR: Transformer based Open World Object Detection
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.02969
CAT: LoCalization and IdentificAtion Cascade Detection Transformer for Open-World Object Detection
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2023/html/Ma_CAT_LoCalization_and_IdentificAtion_Cascade_Detection_Transformer_for_Open-World_Object_CVPR_2023_paper.html
- Venue: CVPR 2023
- Code: https://github.com/xiaomabufei/CAT
Class-agnostic methods consider known and unknown objects as the same foreground objects. By separating the detection of objects and the identification of each instance, these methods use a class-agnostic object proposer to measure the objectness of proposed regions. As the class-agnostic object proposer is trained to learn the objectness rather than the classifier, no bias from known categories is introduced.
Two-branch Objectness-centric Open World Detection
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3552458.3556453
- Venue: HCMA 2022
PROB: Probabilistic Objectness for Open World Object Detection
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2023/html/Zohar_PROB_Probabilistic_Objectness_for_Open_World_Object_Detection_CVPR_2023_paper.html
- Venue: CVPR 2023
- Code: https://github.com/orrzohar/PROB
Addressing the Challenges of Open-World Object Detection
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.14930
Learning Open-World Object Proposals Without Learning to Classify
- Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9697381
- Venue: RA-L & ICRA 2022
- Code: https://github.com/mcahny/object_localization_network
Random Boxes Are Open-world Object Detectors
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/ICCV2023/html/Wang_Random_Boxes_Are_Open-world_Object_Detectors_ICCV_2023_paper.html
- Venue: ICCV 2023
- Code: https://github.com/scuwyh2000/RandBox
Metric-learning OWOD methods generally treat the classification of unknown instances as a metic-learning process. By projecting the features of instances on an embedding feature space, a bunch of metric-learning techniques can be utilized to classify between known classes, unknown classes, and backgrounds. Most metric-learning methods use a common strategy to extract potential unknown instances and focus on distinguishing between known, unknown, and backgrounds. Some methods even extend to separate different unknown classes without ground truth labels, which is closer to real open-world settings.
Revisiting Open World Object Detection
- Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10288518
- Venue: TCSVT
- Code: https://github.com/RE-OWOD/RE-OWOD
Open-World Object Detection via Discriminative Class Prototype Learning
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.11757
- Venue: ICIP 2022
UC-OWOD: Unknown-Classified Open World Object Detection
- Paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-20080-9_12
- Venue: ECCV 2022
- Code: https://github.com/JohnWuzh/UC-OWOD
Apart from what has been included, there are also other OWOD methods that cannot be classified into any of the categories above.
Class-agnostic Object Detection with Multi-modal Transformer
- Paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-20080-9_30
- Venue: ECCV 2022
- Code: https://github.com/mmaaz60/mvits_for_class_agnostic_od
Unknown-Aware Object Detection: Learning What You Don't Know from Videos in the Wild
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2022/html/Du_Unknown-Aware_Object_Detection_Learning_What_You_Dont_Know_From_Videos_CVPR_2022_paper.html
- Venue: CVPR 2022
- Code: https://github.com/deeplearning-wisc/stud
Detecting the open-world objects with the help of the Brain
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11623
- Code: https://github.com/xiaomabufei/DOWB
Exploring Orthogonality in Open World Object Detection (OrthogonalDet)
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2024/papers/Sun_Exploring_Orthogonality_in_Open_World_Object_Detection_CVPR_2024_paper.pdf
- Venue: CVPR 2024
- Code: https://github.com/feifeiobama/OrthogonalDet
Annealing-based Label-Transfer Learning for Open World Object Detection (ALLOW)
- Paper: https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2023/papers/Ma_Annealing-Based_Label-Transfer_Learning_for_Open_World_Object_Detection_CVPR_2023_paper.pdf
- Venue: CVPR 2023
- Code: https://github.com/DIG-Beihang/ALLOW
Exploiting Hierarchical Structure Learning with Hyperbolic Distance Enhances Open World Object Detection (Hyp-OW)
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.14291
- Venue: AAAI 2024
- Code: https://github.com/boschresearch/Hyp-OW
Recalling Unknowns Without Losing Precision: An Effective Solution to Large Model-Guided Open World Object Detection (SGROD)
- Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10684083
- Venue: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP)
- Code: https://github.com/harrylin-hyl/SGROD
Enhancing Open-World Object Detection with Knowledge Transfer and Class-Awareness Neutralization (KTCN)
- Paper: https://www.ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/0162.pdf
- Venue: IJCAI 2024
- Code: https://github.com/xxyzll/KTCN
Unsupervised Recognition of Unknown Objects for Open-World Object Detection (MEPU)
- Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10978049
- Venue: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS)
- Code: https://github.com/frh23333/mepu-owod
Enhancing Open-World Object Detection with Foundation Models and Dynamic Learning (FMDL)
- Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957417425006724
- Venue: Expert Systems with Applications (ESA)
- Code: -
Unified Open World and Open Vocabulary Object Detection (OW-OVD)
- Venue: CVPR 2025
- Code: https://github.com/xxyzll/OW_OVD
Efficient Universal Open-World Object Detection (YOLO-UniOW)
- Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.20645
- Venue: arXiv (preprint)
- Code: https://github.com/THU-MIG/YOLO-UniOW
In the task of open-world object detection, two datasets are commonly used in most existing methods, MS-COCO dataset and PASCAL VOC dataset. These datasets are divided into several splits based on two strategies.
First, in the original OWOD task, ORE integrates the MS-COCO dataset with the PASCAL VOC dataset to provide more
samples called OWOD split. Specifically, all the classes and the corresponding samples are grouped into a set of
non-overlapping tasks
Most existing state-ot-the-art methods use OWOD split as their evaluation protocol, the results are concluded below:
| Task IDs | Task 1 | Task 2 | Task 3 | Task 4 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Methods | U-Recall | mAP | U-Recall | mAP | U-Recall | mAP | mAP | ||||||
| Current Known |
Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | ||||
| ORE | 4.9 | 56.0 | 2.9 | 52.7 | 26.0 | 39.4 | 3.9 | 38.2 | 12.7 | 29.7 | 29.6 | 12.4 | 25.3 |
| UC-OWOD | – | 50.7 | – | 33.1 | 30.5 | 31.8 | – | 28.8 | 16.3 | 24.6 | 25.6 | 12.9 | 23.2 |
| OW-DETR | 7.5 | 59.2 | 6.2 | 53.6 | 33.5 | 42.9 | 5.7 | 38.3 | 15.8 | 30.8 | 31.4 | 17.1 | 27.8 |
| Fast-OWDETR | 9.2 | 56.6 | 8.8 | 51.3 | 28.6 | 39.4 | 7.8 | 39.2 | 15.7 | 32.2 | 28.2 | 11.4 | 25.0 |
| OCPL | 8.3 | 56.6 | 7.7 | 50.7 | 27.5 | 39.1 | 11.9 | 38.6 | 14.7 | 30.7 | 30.8 | 14.4 | 26.7 |
| RE-OWOD | 9.1 | 59.7 | 9.9 | 54.1 | 37.3 | 45.6 | 11.4 | 43.1 | 24.6 | 37.6 | 38.0 | 28.7 | 35.7 |
| RandBox | 10.6 | 61.8 | 6.3 | – | – | 45.3 | 7.8 | – | – | 39.4 | – | – | 35.4 |
| 2B-OCD | 12.1 | 56.4 | 9.4 | 51.6 | 25.3 | 38.5 | 11.7 | 37.2 | 13.2 | 29.2 | 30.0 | 13.3 | 25.8 |
| ALLOW | 13.6 | 59.3 | 10.0 | 53.2 | 34.0 | 45.6 | 14.3 | 42.6 | 26.7 | 38.0 | 33.5 | 21.8 | 30.6 |
| PROB | 19.4 | 59.5 | 17.4 | 55.7 | 32.2 | 44.0 | 19.6 | 43.0 | 22.2 | 36.0 | 35.7 | 18.9 | 31.5 |
| Open World DETR | 21.0 | 59.9 | 15.7 | 51.8 | 36.4 | 44.1 | 17.4 | 38.9 | 24.7 | 34.2 | 32.0 | 19.7 | 29.0 |
| Hyp-OW | 23.5 | 59.4 | 20.6 | – | – | 44.0 | 26.3 | – | – | 36.8 | – | – | 33.6 |
| CAT | 23.7 | 60.0 | 19.1 | 55.5 | 32.7 | 44.1 | 24.4 | 42.8 | 18.7 | 34.8 | 34.4 | 16.6 | 29.9 |
| ORTH | 24.6 | 61.3 | 26.3 | 55.5 | 38.5 | 47.0 | 29.1 | 46.7 | 30.6 | 41.3 | 42.4 | 24.3 | 37.9 |
| MEPU-FS | 31.6 | 60.2 | 30.9 | 57.3 | 33.3 | 44.8 | 30.1 | 42.6 | 21.0 | 35.4 | 34.8 | 19.1 | 30.9 |
| SGROD | 34.3 | 59.8 | 32.6 | 56.0 | 32.3 | 44.9 | 32.7 | 42.8 | 22.4 | 36.0 | 35.5 | 18.5 | 31.2 |
| OW-RCNN | 37.7 | 63.0 | 39.9 | 48.8 | 41.7 | 45.2 | 43.0 | 45.2 | 31.7 | 40.7 | 40.3 | 28.8 | 37.4 |
| SKDF | 39.0 | 56.8 | 36.7 | 52.3 | 28.3 | 40.3 | 36.1 | 36.9 | 16.4 | 30.1 | 31.0 | 14.7 | 26.9 |
| KTCN | 41.5 | 60.2 | 38.6 | 55.8 | 36.3 | 46.0 | 39.7 | 43.5 | 22.1 | 36.4 | 35.1 | 16.2 | 30.4 |
| FMDL | 41.6 | 62.3 | 38.7 | 59.2 | 38.6 | 47.3 | 35.6 | 48.1 | 32.2 | 43.2 | 44.5 | 26.7 | 38.3 |
| MAVL | 50.1 | 64.0 | 49.5 | 61.6 | 30.8 | 46.2 | 50.9 | 43.8 | 22.7 | 36.8 | 36.2 | 20.6 | 32.3 |
| OW-OVD | 50.0 | 69.4 | 51.7 | 69.5 | 41.7 | 55.6 | 50.6 | 55.5 | 29.8 | 47.0 | 47.0 | 25.2 | 41.6 |
| YOLO-UniOW | 82.6 | 73.6 | 82.6 | 73.4 | 73.4 | 48.4 | 60.9 | 81.5 | 60.9 | 39.0 | 53.6 | 32.0 | 48.2 |
In the latest OWOD task, OW-DETR proposed a new strategy by splitting the categories across super-classes, called MS-COCO split. Specifically, object classes are grouped into the same tasks by semantic meanings. For example, trucks and vehicles that belong to different tasks in the combined dataset are grouped into the same super-class task: Animals, Person, Vehicles.
Several methods also reported their evaluation results based on MS-COCO split. The results are shown below:
| Task IDs | Task 1 | Task 2 | Task 3 | Task 4 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Methods | U-Recall | mAP | U-Recall | mAP | U-Recall | mAP | mAP | ||||||
| Current Known |
Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | Previously Known |
Current Known |
Both | ||||
| ORE | 1.5 | 61.4 | 3.9 | 56.5 | 26.1 | 40.6 | 3.6 | 38.7 | 23.7 | 33.7 | 33.6 | 26.3 | 31.8 |
| OW-DETR | 5.7 | 71.5 | 6.2 | 62.8 | 27.5 | 43.8 | 6.9 | 45.2 | 24.9 | 38.5 | 38.2 | 28.1 | 33.1 |
| PROB | 19.4 | 59.5 | 17.4 | 55.7 | 32.2 | 44.0 | 19.6 | 43.0 | 22.2 | 36.0 | 35.7 | 18.9 | 31.5 |
| CAT | 24.0 | 74.2 | 23.0 | 67.6 | 35.5 | 50.7 | 24.6 | 51.2 | 32.6 | 45.0 | 45.4 | 35.1 | 42.8 |
| ORTH | 24.6 | 71.6 | 27.9 | 64.0 | 39.9 | 51.3 | 31.9 | 52.1 | 42.2 | 48.8 | 48.7 | 38.8 | 46.2 |
| Hyp-OW | 23.9 | 72.7 | 23.3 | – | – | 50.6 | 25.4 | – | – | 46.2 | – | – | 44.8 |
| OW-RCNN | 23.9 | 68.9 | 33.3 | 49.6 | 36.7 | 41.9 | 40.8 | 42.3 | 30.8 | 38.5 | 39.4 | 32.2 | 37.7 |
| MEPU-FS | 37.9 | 74.3 | 35.8 | 68.0 | 41.9 | 54.3 | 35.7 | 50.2 | 38.3 | 46.2 | 43.7 | 33.7 | 41.2 |
| SGROD | 48.0 | 73.2 | 48.9 | 64.7 | 36.7 | 50.0 | 47.7 | 47.4 | 32.4 | 42.4 | 42.5 | 32.6 | 40.0 |
| SKDF | 60.9 | 69.4 | 60.0 | 63.8 | 26.9 | 44.4 | 58.6 | 46.2 | 28.0 | 40.1 | 41.8 | 29.6 | 38.7 |
| OW-OVD | 76.2 | 78.6 | 79.8 | 78.5 | 61.5 | 69.6 | 78.4 | 69.6 | 55.1 | 64.7 | 64.8 | 56.3 | 62.7 |
| YOLO-UniOW | 84.5 | 74.4 | 83.4 | 74.4 | 56.9 | 65.2 | 83.0 | 65.2 | 52.2 | 61.0 | 61.0 | 52.7 | 58.9 |
If you find this work useful, please cite:
@article{li2024open,
title={Open world object detection: a survey},
author={Li, Yiming and Wang, Yi and Wang, Wenqian and Lin, Dan and Li, Bingbing and Yap, Kim-Hui},
journal={IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology},
year={2024},
publisher={IEEE}
}




