# CertainNet: Sampling-free Uncertainty Estimation for Object Detection Source: [CertainNet: Sampling-free Uncertainty Estimation for Object Detection]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-25T23:50:06.694Z Authors: Stefano Gasperini, Jan Haug, Mohammad-Ali Nikouei Mahani, Alvaro Marcos-Ramiro, Nassir Navab, Benjamin Busam, Federico Tombari Published: 2021-10-04T17:59:31.000Z ## Abstract Estimating the uncertainty of a neural network plays a fundamental role in safety-critical settings. In perception for autonomous driving, measuring the uncertainty means providing additional calibrated information to downstream tasks, such as path planning, that can use it towards safe navigation. In this work, we propose a novel sampling-free uncertainty estimation method for object detection. We call it CertainNet, and it is the first to provide separate uncertainties for each output signal: objectness, class, location and size. To achieve this, we propose an uncertainty-aware heatmap, and exploit the neighboring bounding boxes provided by the detector at inference time. We evaluate the detection performance and the quality of the different uncertainty estimates separately, also with challenging out-of-domain samples: BDD100K and nuImages with models trained on KITTI. Additionally, we propose a new metric to evaluate location and size uncertainties. When transferring to unseen datasets, CertainNet generalizes substantially better than previous methods and an ensemble, while being real-time and providing high quality and comprehensive uncertainty estimates. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()