mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Towards Real-Time Monocular Depth Estimation for Robotics: A Survey

arXiv 2111.08600 ↗First posted 16 Nov 2021cs.ROcited by 57

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Abstract (arXiv)

As an essential component for many autonomous driving and robotic activities such as ego-motion estimation, obstacle avoidance and scene understanding, monocular depth estimation (MDE) has attracted great attention from the computer vision and robotics communities. Over the past decades, a large number of methods have been developed. To the best of our knowledge, however, there is not a comprehensive survey of MDE. This paper aims to bridge this gap by reviewing 197 relevant articles published between 1970 and 2021. In particular, we provide a comprehensive survey of MDE covering various methods, introduce the popular performance evaluation metrics and summarize publically available datasets. We also summarize available open-source implementations of some representative methods and compare their performances. Furthermore, we review the application of MDE in some important robotic tasks. Finally, we conclude this paper by presenting some promising directions for future research. This survey is expected to assist readers to navigate this research field.

Key facts. Cited by 57 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 16 Nov 2021.

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Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 10; 2024: 16; 2025: 22; 2026: 7.

57 papers.

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  1. 2024UniDepth: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimationcited by 382
  2. 2025Video Depth Anything: Consistent Depth Estimation for Super-Long Videoscited by 207
  3. 2024DepthCrafter: Generating Consistent Long Depth Sequences for Open-world Videoscited by 204
  4. 2025UniDepthV2: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimation Made Simplercited by 173
  5. 2023Towards Zero-Shot Scale-Aware Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 101
  6. 2023SSCBench: A Large-Scale 3D Semantic Scene Completion Benchmark for Autonomous Drivingcited by 75
  7. 2025UniK3D: Universal Camera Monocular 3D Estimationcited by 62
  8. 2023RoboDepth: Robust Out-of-Distribution Depth Estimation under Corruptionscited by 49
  9. 2025GeometryCrafter: Consistent Geometry Estimation for Open-world Videos with Diffusion Priorscited by 37
  10. 2024SharpDepth: Sharpening Metric Depth Predictions Using Diffusion Distillationcited by 21
  11. 2023I2P-Rec: Recognizing Images on Large-scale Point Cloud Maps through Bird's Eye View Projectionscited by 16
  12. 2022Event-based Monocular Dense Depth Estimation with Recurrent Transformerscited by 14
38 more
  1. 2025FlashDepth: Real-time Streaming Video Depth Estimation at 2K Resolutioncited by 14
  2. 2023The RoboDepth Challenge: Methods and Advancements Towards Robust Depth Estimationcited by 13
  3. 2025Seurat: From Moving Points to Depthcited by 13
  4. 2024DCDepth: Progressive Monocular Depth Estimation in Discrete Cosine Domaincited by 12
  5. 2024Ensuring UAV Safety: A Vision-only and Real-time Framework for Collision Avoidance Through Object Detection, Tracking, and Distance Estimationcited by 11
  6. 20253D-MOOD: Lifting 2D to 3D for Monocular Open-Set Object Detectioncited by 11
  7. 2026UniDAC: Universal Metric Depth Estimation for Any Cameracited by 8
  8. 2024Efficient Multi-task Uncertainties for Joint Semantic Segmentation and Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 6
  9. 2024GRIN: Zero-Shot Metric Depth with Pixel-Level Diffusioncited by 6
  10. 2024Decoupling Fine Detail and Global Geometry for Compressed Depth Map Super-Resolutioncited by 6
  11. 2023Camera-Independent Single Image Depth Estimation from Defocus Blurcited by 5
  12. 2024Improving Domain Generalization in Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation via Stabilized Adversarial Trainingcited by 5
  13. 2024Enhanced Scale-aware Depth Estimation for Monocular Endoscopic Scenes with Geometric Modelingcited by 4
  14. 2025MARG: MAstering Risky Gap Terrains for Legged Robots with Elevation Mappingcited by 4
  15. 2024Depth Estimation Based on 3D Gaussian Splatting Siamese Defocuscited by 3
  16. 2025Focal Split: Untethered Snapshot Depth from Differential Defocuscited by 3
  17. 2025Video Depth Propagationcited by 3
  18. 2024A Comparative Study on Multi-task Uncertainty Quantification in Semantic Segmentation and Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 2
  19. 2025A Critical Synthesis of Uncertainty Quantification and Foundation Models in Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 2
  20. 2025Learning Inverse Laplacian Pyramid for Progressive Depth Completioncited by 2
  21. 2025DepthSync: Diffusion Guidance-Based Depth Synchronization for Scale- and Geometry-Consistent Video Depth Estimationcited by 2
  22. 2023Do More With What You Have: Transferring Depth-Scale from Labeled to Unlabeled Domainscited by 1
  23. 2023InSpaceType: Reconsider Space Type in Indoor Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 1
  24. 2023UFD-PRiME: Unsupervised Joint Learning of Optical Flow and Stereo Depth through Pixel-Level Rigid Motion Estimationcited by 1
  25. 2024VIRUS-NeRF -- Vision, InfraRed and UltraSonic based Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 1
  26. 2024CRF360D: Monocular 360 Depth Estimation via Spherical Fully-Connected CRFscited by 1
  27. 2024Refinement of Monocular Depth Maps via Multi-View Differentiable Renderingcited by 1
  28. 2025TR2M: Transferring Monocular Relative Depth to Metric Depth with Language Descriptions and Dual-Level Scale-Oriented Contrastcited by 1
  29. 2025ROVR-Open-Dataset: A Large-Scale Depth Dataset for Autonomous Drivingcited by 1
  30. 2025BREA-Depth: Bronchoscopy Realistic Airway-geometric Depth Estimationcited by 1
  31. 2025Shedding Light on Depth: Explainability Assessment in Monocular Depth Estimationcited by 1
  32. 2025Dynamic Object Masks as Goal Representations for Visual Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  33. 2025Robust Shape from Focus via Multiscale Directional Dilated Laplacian and Recurrent Networkcited by 1
  34. 2026Adapting Depth Anything to Adverse Imaging Conditions with Eventscited by 1
  35. 2026DepthAgent: Towards Better Universal Depth Estimation via Sample-wise Expert Selectioncited by 1
  36. 2022Lightweight Monocular Depth Estimation with an Edge Guided Networkcited by 0
  37. 2023Autoencoding a Soft Touch to Learn Grasping from On-land to Underwatercited by 0
  38. 2024PhysDepth: Plug-and-Play Physical Refinement for Monocular Depth Estimation in Challenging Environmentscited by 0

50 most cited of 57 All 57 (JSON)