How Evaluation Choices Change the Measured Benefit of Cooperative Perception: Evidence from Three V2X Benchmarks

Abstract

Cooperative perception, in which connected vehicles and roadside infrastructure share sensor information, is a candidate enabler of automated mobility, and benchmark accuracy is the evidence cited when roadside deployment is considered. This paper audits that evidence base across one simulated and two real-world vehicle-to-everything (V2X) benchmarks. In simulation, two widely studied robustness axes leave almost no recoverable headroom: an infrastructure-anchored pose correction returns about one accuracy point at every error level, and corrupting a partner costs 0.7 points. On real data, measurement choices govern the conclusion. An apparent seventeen-fold advantage of infrastructure in partner-poor frames falls below four-fold once the split is broadened, and an ad-hoc class definition measures a far smaller benefit than the official protocol reports. Cooperation is worth 7 to 15 accuracy points, yet 27% of frames on one split offer no partner and almost none do on another, so every regime-conditioned claim must name its split.