[2603.02194] From Leaderboard to Deployment: Code Quality Challenges in AV Perception Repositories

Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition arXiv:2603.02194 (cs) [Submitted on 2 Mar 2026] Title:From Leaderboard to Deployment: Code Quality Challenges in AV Perception Repositories Authors:Mateus Karvat, Bram Adams, Sidney Givigi View a PDF of the paper titled From Leaderboard to Deployment: Code Quality Challenges in AV Perception Repositories, by Mateus Karvat and 2 other authors View PDF Abstract:Autonomous vehicle (AV) perception models are typically evaluated solely on benchmark performance metrics, with limited attention to code quality, production readiness and long-term maintainability. This creates a significant gap between research excellence and real-world deployment in safety-critical systems subject to international safety standards. To address this gap, we present the first large-scale empirical study of software quality in AV perception repositories, systematically analyzing 178 unique models from the KITTI and NuScenes 3D Object Detection leaderboards. Using static analysis tools (Pylint, Bandit, and Radon), we evaluated code errors, security vulnerabilities, maintainability, and development practices. Our findings revealed that only 7.3% of the studied repositories meet basic production-readiness criteria, defined as having zero critical errors and no high-severity security vulnerabilities. Security issues are highly concentrated, with the top five issues responsible for almost 80% of occurrences, which prompted us to develop a set of act...