# DMODE: Differential Monocular Object Distance Estimation Module without Class Specific Information

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.12596 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12596/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [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)
- [MOT16: A Benchmark for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00831/) (2016)
- [3D Bounding Box Estimation Using Deep Learning and Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00496/) (2016)
- [M3D-RPN: Monocular 3D Region Proposal Network for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06038/) (2019)
- [MOTS: Multi-Object Tracking and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03604/) (2019)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR++: Accurate Depth for 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06310/) (2019)
- [Learning Depth from Single Monocular Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.07411/) (2015)
- [EagerMOT: 3D Multi-Object Tracking via Sensor Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14682/) (2021)
- [SynDistNet: Self-Supervised Monocular Fisheye Camera Distance Estimation Synergized with Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04017/) (2020)
- [Monocular 3D Object Detection with Decoupled Structured Polygon Estimation and Height-Guided Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.01619/) (2020)
- [MonoLoco: Monocular 3D Pedestrian Localization and Uncertainty Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06059/) (2019)
- [Learning Object-specific Distance from a Monocular Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04182/) (2019)
- [DF-SLAM: A Deep-Learning Enhanced Visual SLAM System based on Deep Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07223/) (2019)
- [Anchor Distance for 3D Multi-Object Distance Estimation from 2D Single Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10399/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Utilizing a single camera for measuring object distances is a cost-effective alternative to stereo-vision and LiDAR. Although monocular distance estimation has been explored in the literature, most existing techniques rely on object class knowledge to achieve high performance. Without this contextual data, monocular distance estimation becomes more challenging, lacking reference points and object-specific cues. However, these cues can be misleading for objects with wide-range variation or adversarial situations, which is a challenging aspect of object-agnostic distance estimation. In this paper, we propose DMODE, a class-agnostic method for monocular distance estimation that does not require object class knowledge. DMODE estimates an object's distance by fusing its fluctuation in size over time with the camera's motion, making it adaptable to various object detectors and unknown objects, thus addressing these challenges. We evaluate our model on the KITTI MOTS dataset using ground-truth bounding box annotations and outputs from TrackRCNN and EagerMOT. The object's location is determined using the change in bounding box sizes and camera position without measuring the object's detection source or class attributes. Our approach demonstrates superior performance in multi-class object distance detection scenarios compared to conventional methods.