A bird's eye view feature map, augmented with semantic information, can be used to detect an object in an environment. A point cloud data set augmented with the semantic information that is associated with identities of classes of objects can be obtained. Features can be extracted from the point cloud data set. Based on the features, an initial bird's eye view feature map can be produced. Because operations performed on the point cloud data set to extract the features or to produce the initial bird's eye view feature map can have an effect of diminishing an ability to distinguish the semantic information in the initial bird's eye view feature map, the initial bird's eye view feature map can be augmented with the semantic information to produce an augmented bird's eye view feature map. Based on the augmented bird's eye view feature map, the object in the environment can be detected.