Submitted:
11 September 2025
Posted:
15 September 2025
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Abstract
Keywords:
1. Introduction
2. Related Work
2.1. Traditional Dust Filtering Methods
2.2. Machine Learning Based Dust Filtering Methods
3. Proposed Dust Filtering Method
3.1. Neural Architecture: Reduced-PointNet++
3.2. Point Cloud Features
- SI: Spatial + Intensity features.
- STdm: Spatial + Temporal-magnitude-difference features.
- STdv: Spatial + Temporal-vector-difference features.
- STi: Spatial + Temporal-interpolated features.
- SITdm: Spatial + Intensity + Temporal-magnitude-difference features.
- SITdv: Spatial + Intensity + Temporal-vector-difference features.
- SITi: Spatial + Intensity + Temporal-interpolated features.
4. Experimental Results
4.1. UCHILE-Dust Database
Interior 1 & 2 Subsets
Exterior 1 & 2 Subsets
Carén Subset
4.2. Experimental Setup
- The CrossEntropyLoss was used as a loss function but considering weights for the classes, since they are unbalanced. This weight consisted of the inverse of the proportion of each class within the corresponding training dataset.
- The number of training epochs was set at 100, but Early Stopping was implemented with 10 epochs of patience relative to the average accuracy value in the validation set. This metric was chosen as it is invariant to class imbalance.
- Data Augmentation methods were used: rotations, scaling, occlusion, and noise.
- A dropout rate of 0.7 was used to reduce overfitting and was applied to the last convolution layer before the classification layers.
4.3. Results in Real Environments with Static Sensors
4.4. Results in Real Environments with Moving Sensors
4.5. Measuring the Generalization Capabilities of the Method
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.58 | 0.98 | 0.73 |
| STdm | 0.008 | 0.96 | 0.46 | 0.95 | 0.62 |
| STdv | 0.005 | 0.95 | 0.41 | 0.95 | 0.57 |
| STi | 0.005 | 0.96 | 0.64 | 0.94 | 0.76 |
| SITdm | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.60 | 0.98 | 0.74 |
| SITdv | 0.008 | 0.97 | 0.54 | 0.98 | 0.70 |
| SITi | 0.01 | 0.98 | 0.57 | 0.98 | 0.72 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.56 | 0.98 | 0.71 |
| STdm | 0.008 | 0.96 | 0.50 | 0.96 | 0.66 |
| STdv | 0.005 | 0.96 | 0.49 | 0.95 | 0.65 |
| STi | 0.01 | 0.96 | 0.52 | 0.95 | 0.67 |
| SITdm | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.60 | 0.98 | 0.75 |
| SITdv | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.58 | 0.98 | 0.73 |
| SITi | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.57 | 0.98 | 0.72 |
4.6. Performance Comparison between PointNet++ and reduced-PointNet++
| Method | PointNet++ (s) | reduced-PointNet++ (s) |
| SI | 0.1383 | 0.0676 |
| STdm | 0.1398 | 0.0672 |
| STdv | 0.1419 | 0.0679 |
| STI | 0.1420 | 0.0694 |
| SITdm | 0.1372 | 0.0710 |
| SITdv | 0.1435 | 0.0664 |
| SITi | 0.1435 | 0.0630 |
| Average | 0.1409 | 0.0675 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.55 | 0.98 | 0.71 |
| STdm | 0.005 | 0.96 | 0.46 | 0.96 | 0.62 |
| STdv | 0.005 | 0.95 | 0.51 | 0.94 | 0.66 |
| STi | 0.01 | 0.96 | 0.51 | 0.96 | 0.67 |
| SITdm | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.58 | 0.98 | 0.73 |
| SITdv | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.62 | 0.97 | 0.76 |
| SITi | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.61 | 0.97 | 0.75 |
5. Discussion
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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| Block | PointNet++ | reduced-PointNet++ |
| SA1 | 1024 pts, r=0.1, 32 nbr, MLP: [32, 32, 64] | 512 pts, r=0.1, 32 nbr, MLP: [16, 16, 32] |
| SA2 | 256 pts, r=0.2, 32 nbr, MLP: [64, 64, 128] | 128 pts, r=0.2, 32 nbr, MLP: [32, 32, 64] |
| SA3 | 64 pts, r=0.4, 32 nbr, MLP: [128, 128, 256] | - |
| SA4 | 16 pts, r=0.8, 32 nbr, MLP: [256, 256, 512] | - |
| FP4 | in_ch: 768, MLP: [256, 256] | - |
| FP3 | in_ch: 384, MLP: [256, 256] | - |
| FP2 | in_ch: 320, MLP: [256, 128] | in_ch: 96, MLP: [64, 32] |
| FP1 | in_ch: 128, MLP: [128, 128, 128] | in_ch: (32 + num_feats), MLP: [32, 32] |
| Conv1d | 128 → 128 | 32 → 32 |
| BatchNorm1d | 128 | 32 |
| Dropout | p=0.7 | p=0.7 |
| Conv1d (final) | 128 → num_classes | 32 → num_classes |
| Variant | Features Vector |
| SI | |
| STdm | |
| STdv | |
| STi | |
| SITdm | |
| SITdv | |
| SITi |
| Subset | Recordings | Point Clouds | Points | % Dust | Format | Train / Val / Test (%) |
| Interior 1 | 10 | 1,874 | 72,741,326 | 4.1% | PCAP | 82 / 09 / 09 |
| Interior 2 | 12 | 1,740 | 71,225,483 | 11.2% | PCAP | 70 / 15 / 15 |
| Exterior 1 | 10 | 1,529 | 45,311,889 | 3.2% | PCAP | 84 / 08 / 08 |
| Exterior 2 | 13 | 1,885 | 75,820,483 | 3.6% | PCAP | 66 / 17 / 17 |
| Carén | 13 | 7,089 | 234,929,532 | 8.1% | Rosbag | 46 / 26 / 28 |
| Subset | N | |||
| Interior 1 | 90 | 0.001 | 0.01 | 4 |
| Interior 2 | 90 | 0.001 | 0.01 | 4 |
| Exterior 1 | 90 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 4 |
| Exterior 2 | 90 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 4 |
| Carén | 90 | 0.001 | 0.01 | 4 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.008 | 0.79 | 0.12 | 0.93 | 0.22 |
| STdm | 0.008 | 0.87 | 0.17 | 1.00 | 0.29 |
| STdv | 0.008 | 0.86 | 0.17 | 0.99 | 0.29 |
| STI | 0.01 | 0.89 | 0.26 | 0.91 | 0.41 |
| SITdm | 0.01 | 0.86 | 0.17 | 0.97 | 0.29 |
| SITdv | 0.005 | 0.77 | 0.13 | 0.85 | 0.23 |
| SITi | 0.005 | 0.80 | 0.15 | 0.85 | 0.26 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.76 | 0.14 | 0.77 | 0.24 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.008 | 0.94 | 0.53 | 0.94 | 0.68 |
| STdm | 0.008 | 0.92 | 0.6 | 0.88 | 0.71 |
| STdv | 0.01 | 0.84 | 0.5 | 0.74 | 0.59 |
| STI | 0.008 | 0.87 | 0.55 | 0.8 | 0.65 |
| SITdm | 0.008 | 0.94 | 0.68 | 0.91 | 0.78 |
| SITdv | 0.008 | 0.95 | 0.66 | 0.93 | 0.77 |
| SITi | 0.008 | 0.94 | 0.6 | 0.92 | 0.73 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.86 | 0.21 | 0.96 | 0.35 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.01 | 0.99 | 0.48 | 0.99 | 0.65 |
| STdm | 0.005 | 0.99 | 0.35 | 0.98 | 0.51 |
| STdv | 0.005 | 0.99 | 0.27 | 0.99 | 0.42 |
| STi | 0.005 | 0.97 | 0.46 | 0.95 | 0.62 |
| SITdm | 0.01 | 0.99 | 0.68 | 0.99 | 0.81 |
| SITdv | 0.005 | 0.99 | 0.54 | 0.98 | 0.70 |
| SITi | 0.01 | 0.99 | 0.51 | 0.98 | 0.67 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.91 | 0.03 | 0.98 | 0.06 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.38 | 0.99 | 0.55 |
| STdm | 0.01 | 0.98 | 0.35 | 0.99 | 0.52 |
| STdv | 0.01 | 0.97 | 0.36 | 0.97 | 0.53 |
| STi | 0.01 | 0.94 | 0.2 | 0.97 | 0.34 |
| SITdm | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.38 | 0.99 | 0.55 |
| SITdv | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.39 | 0.99 | 0.57 |
| SITi | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.44 | 0.99 | 0.61 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.88 | 0.09 | 0.98 | 0.16 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.61 | 0.98 | 0.75 |
| STdm | 0.01 | 0.95 | 0.43 | 0.96 | 0.60 |
| STdv | 0.01 | 0.95 | 0.47 | 0.94 | 0.62 |
| STi | 0.008 | 0.96 | 0.72 | 0.94 | 0.81 |
| SITdm | 0.01 | 0.98 | 0.6 | 0.98 | 0.74 |
| SITdv | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.62 | 0.98 | 0.76 |
| SITi | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.63 | 0.97 | 0.76 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.89 | 0.18 | 0.98 | 0.03 |
| Method | Learn. Rate | Accuracy (avg) |
Precision (dust) |
Recall (dust) |
F1-Score (dust) |
| SI | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.61 | 0.98 | 0.75 |
| STdm | 0.008 | 0.96 | 0.56 | 0.95 | 0.70 |
| STdv | 0.008 | 0.95 | 0.41 | 0.96 | 0.58 |
| STi | 0.005 | 0.96 | 0.56 | 0.95 | 0.71 |
| SITdm | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.64 | 0.98 | 0.77 |
| SITdv | 0.005 | 0.98 | 0.7 | 0.97 | 0.82 |
| SITi | 0.008 | 0.98 | 0.62 | 0.98 | 0.76 |
| LIDROR | - | 0.89 | 0.18 | 0.98 | 0.3 |
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