# PlaneDepth: Self-supervised Depth Estimation via Orthogonal Planes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.01612 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01612/

## Key facts

- Cited by 32 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [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)
- [AdaBins: Depth Estimation using Adaptive Bins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14141/) (2020)
- [Sparsity Invariant CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06500/) (2017)
- [Stereo Magnification: Learning View Synthesis using Multiplane Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09817/) (2018)
- [Depth from Videos in the Wild: Unsupervised Monocular Depth Learning from Unknown Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04998/) (2019)
- [BinsFormer: Revisiting Adaptive Bins for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00987/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation: Solving the Dynamic Object Problem by Semantic Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06936/) (2020)
- [Feature-metric Loss for Self-supervised Learning of Depth and Egomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10603/) (2020)
- [MINE: Towards Continuous Depth MPI with NeRF for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14910/) (2021)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Hints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09051/) (2019)
- [SMD-Nets: Stereo Mixture Density Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03866/) (2021)
- [LocalBins: Improving Depth Estimation by Learning Local Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15132/) (2022)
- [How do neural networks see depth in single images?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07005/) (2019)
- [Rethinking Depth Estimation for Multi-View Stereo: A Unified Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01501/) (2022)
- [The Edge of Depth: Explicit Constraints between Segmentation and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00171/) (2020)
- [SuperDepth: Self-Supervised, Super-Resolved Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.01849/) (2018)
- [Fine-grained Semantics-aware Representation Enhancement for Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08829/) (2021)
- [Forget About the LiDAR: Self-Supervised Depth Estimators with MED Probability Volumes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03633/) (2020)
- [Refine and Distill: Exploiting Cycle-Inconsistency and Knowledge Distillation for Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.04202/) (2019)
- [Excavating the Potential Capacity of Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12484/) (2021)
- [Single Image Depth Estimation Trained via Depth from Defocus Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05036/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [SC-DepthV3: Robust Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.03660/) (2022)
- [WorDepth: Variational Language Prior for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03635/) (2024)
- [Synthetic-to-Real Self-supervised Robust Depth Estimation via Learning with Motion and Structure Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20211/) (2025)
- [SQLdepth: Generalizable Self-Supervised Fine-Structured Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00526/) (2023)
- [RSA: Resolving Scale Ambiguities in Monocular Depth Estimators through Language Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02924/) (2024)
- [Jasmine: Harnessing Diffusion Prior for Self-supervised Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15905/) (2025)
- [WeatherDepth: Curriculum Contrastive Learning for Self-Supervised Depth Estimation under Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05556/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning-based Depth Estimation Methods from Monocular Image and Videos: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19675/) (2024)
- [MonoDiffusion: Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation Using Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07198/) (2023)
- [From-Ground-To-Objects: Coarse-to-Fine Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation of Dynamic Objects with Ground Contact Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10118/) (2023)
- [Mono-ViFI: A Unified Learning Framework for Self-supervised Single- and Multi-frame Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14126/) (2024)
- [Embodiment: Self-Supervised Depth Estimation Based on Camera Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01565/) (2024)
- [SCIPaD: Incorporating Spatial Clues into Unsupervised Pose-Depth Joint Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05283/) (2024)
- [Hybrid-grained Feature Aggregation with Coarse-to-fine Language Guidance for Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09320/) (2025)
- [EC-Depth: Exploring the consistency of self-supervised monocular depth estimation in challenging scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08044/) (2023)
- [Towards Better Data Exploitation in Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05254/) (2023)
- [MonoPP: Metric-Scaled Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation by Planar-Parallax Geometry in Automotive Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19717/) (2024)
- [ER-LoRA: Effective-Rank Guided Adaptation for Weather-Generalized Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00665/) (2025)
- [BadPart: Unified Black-box Adversarial Patch Attacks against Pixel-wise Regression Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00924/) (2024)
- [Mining Supervision for Dynamic Regions in Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14908/) (2024)
- [Recollection from Pensieve: Novel View Synthesis via Learning from Uncalibrated Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13440/) (2025)
- [GenDepth: Generalizing Monocular Depth Estimation for Arbitrary Camera Parameters via Ground Plane Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06021/) (2023)
- [GVDepth: Zero-Shot Monocular Depth Estimation for Ground Vehicles based on Probabilistic Cue Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06080/) (2024)
- [Learning Depth from Past Selves: Self-Evolution Contrast for Robust Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15167/) (2025)
- [Towards Sharper Object Boundaries in Self-Supervised Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15987/) (2025)
- [FA-Depth: Toward Fast and Accurate Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10885/) (2024)
- [Back2Color: Domain-Adaptive Synthetic-to-Real Monocular Depth Estimation for Dynamic Traffic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07741/) (2024)
- [PhysDepth: Plug-and-Play Physical Refinement for Monocular Depth Estimation in Challenging Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04666/) (2024)
- [Plane Detection and Ranking via Model Information Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09625/) (2025)
- [RAD: Retrieval-Augmented Monocular Metric Depth Estimation for Underrepresented Classes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09532/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multiple near frontal-parallel planes based depth representation demonstrated impressive results in self-supervised monocular depth estimation (MDE). Whereas, such a representation would cause the discontinuity of the ground as it is perpendicular to the frontal-parallel planes, which is detrimental to the identification of drivable space in autonomous driving. In this paper, we propose the PlaneDepth, a novel orthogonal planes based presentation, including vertical planes and ground planes. PlaneDepth estimates the depth distribution using a Laplacian Mixture Model based on orthogonal planes for an input image. These planes are used to synthesize a reference view to provide the self-supervision signal. Further, we find that the widely used resizing and cropping data augmentation breaks the orthogonality assumptions, leading to inferior plane predictions. We address this problem by explicitly constructing the resizing cropping transformation to rectify the predefined planes and predicted camera pose. Moreover, we propose an augmented self-distillation loss supervised with a bilateral occlusion mask to boost the robustness of orthogonal planes representation for occlusions. Thanks to our orthogonal planes representation, we can extract the ground plane in an unsupervised manner, which is important for autonomous driving. Extensive experiments on the KITTI dataset demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method. The code is available at https://github.com/svip-lab/PlaneDepth.