# Does it work outside this benchmark? Introducing the Rigid Depth Constructor tool, depth validation dataset construction in rigid scenes for the masses

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.15970 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15970/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06852/) (2015)
- [ORB-SLAM: a Versatile and Accurate Monocular SLAM System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.00956/) (2015)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [Deep Ordinal Regression Network for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02446/) (2018)
- [From Big to Small: Multi-Scale Local Planar Guidance for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10326/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised CNN for Single View Depth Estimation: Geometry to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04992/) (2016)
- [GeoNet: Unsupervised Learning of Dense Depth, Optical Flow and Camera Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02276/) (2018)
- [Sparsity Invariant CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06500/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Scale-consistent Depth and Ego-motion Learning from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10553/) (2019)
- [DIODE: A Dense Indoor and Outdoor DEpth Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00463/) (2019)
- [LIO-SAM: Tightly-coupled Lidar Inertial Odometry via Smoothing and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00258/) (2020)
- [On the uncertainty of self-supervised monocular depth estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06209/) (2020)
- [Depth from Videos in the Wild: Unsupervised Monocular Depth Learning from Unknown Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04998/) (2019)
- [Self-supervised Learning with Geometric Constraints in Monocular Video: Connecting Flow, Depth, and Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05820/) (2019)
- [A Novel Performance Evaluation Methodology for Single-Target Trackers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.01313/) (2015)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Learning in Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16404/) (2020)
- [How do neural networks see depth in single images?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07005/) (2019)
- [Eliminating the Blind Spot: Adapting 3D Object Detection and Monocular Depth Estimation to 360deg Panoramic Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.06253/) (2018)
- [End-to-end depth from motion with stabilized monocular videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04453/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [SS3D: End2End Self-Supervised 3D from Web Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22686/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a protocol to construct your own depth validation dataset for navigation. This protocol, called RDC for Rigid Depth Constructor, aims at being more accessible and cheaper than already existing techniques, requiring only a camera and a Lidar sensor to get started. We also develop a test suite to get insightful information from the evaluated algorithm. Finally, we take the example of UAV videos, on which we test two depth algorithms that were initially tested on KITTI and show that the drone context is dramatically different from in-car videos. This shows that a single context benchmark should not be considered reliable, and when developing a depth estimation algorithm, one should benchmark it on a dataset that best fits one's particular needs, which often means creating a brand new one. Along with this paper we provide the tool with an open source implementation and plan to make it as user-friendly as possible, to make depth dataset creation possible even for small teams. Our key contributions are the following: We propose a complete, open-source and almost fully automatic software application for creating validation datasets with densely annotated depth, adaptable to a wide variety of image, video and range data. It includes selection tools to adapt the dataset to specific validation needs, and conversion tools to other dataset formats. Using this application, we propose two new real datasets, outdoor and indoor, readily usable in UAV navigation context. Finally as examples, we show an evaluation of two depth prediction algorithms, using a collection of comprehensive (e.g. distribution based) metrics.