In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for memory-efficient and privacy-preserving continual learning in 3D object classification. Unlike conventional memory-based approaches in continual learning that require storing numerous exemplars, our method constructs a compact shape model for each class, retaining only the mean shape along with a few key modes of variation. This strategy not only enables the generation of diverse training samples while drastically reducing memory usage but also enhances privacy by eliminating the need to store original data. To further improve model robustness against input variations—an issue common in 3D domains due to the absence of strong backbones and limited training data—we incorporate Gradient Mode Regularization. This technique enhances model stability and broadens classification margins, resulting in accuracy improvements. We validate our approach through extensive experiments on the ModelNet40, ShapeNet, and ScanNet datasets, where we achieve state-of-the-art performance. Notably, our method consumes only 15% of the memory required by competing methods on the ModelNet40 and ShapeNet, while achieving comparable performance on the challenging ScanNet dataset with just 8.5% of the memory. These results underscore the scalability, effectiveness, and privacy-preserving strengths of our framework for 3D object classification.

We introduce a novel framework for continual learning in 3D object classification. Our approach, CL3D, is based on the selection of prototypes from each class using spectral clustering. For non-Euclidean data such as point clouds, spectral clustering can be employed as long as one can define a distance measure between pairs of samples. Choosing the appropriate distance measure enables us to leverage 3D geometric characteristics to identify representative prototypes for each class. We explore the effectiveness of clustering in the input space (3D points), local feature space (1024-dimensional points), and global feature space. We conduct experiments on the ModelNet40, ShapeNet, and ScanNet datasets, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy exclusively through the use of input space features. By leveraging the combined input, local, and global features, we have improved the state-of-the-art on ModelNet and ShapeNet, utilizing nearly half the memory used by competing approaches. For the challenging ScanNet dataset, our method enhances accuracy by 4.1 % while consuming just 28 % of the memory used by our competitors, demonstrating the scalability of our approach. 1Project page: https://doollakh.github.io/cl3d/