Refining Roadside 4D Radar Vehicle Classification Using Point-Cloud Dispersion
Mohammed Alsakabi, Andreia Figueiredo, António Almeida, John Dolan, Miguel Luís, Pedro Rito, Ozan Tonguz, Susana Sargento
Abstract
Roadside sensing infrastructure is essential for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), but cameras and legacy sensors are limited in range, weather robustness, and depth accuracy. 4D radar complements these modalities by resolving range, azimuth, elevation, and radial velocity under adverse conditions, though its sparse, noisy point clouds make reliable classification difficult. We present a roadside multi-sensor platform combining a 4D radar and stereo depth camera under synchronized acquisition, used to collect a real-world dataset. Our analysis reveals a substantial class-distribution discrepancy between modalities, most notably a strong radar confusion between passenger cars and motorcycles (49.01% and\ 48.60% of the dataset). To address this, we propose a Neyman-Pearson-based binary classifier on the temporally-smoothed 2D positional standard deviation of radar point cloud clusters, reducing classification error from 52.1% to 42.7%. This lightweight and edge-deployable approach improves radar-only classification reliability and lays the foundation for future camera-radar fusion.