# Adversarial Training of Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation against Physical-World Attacks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13487 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13487/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 59 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Jan 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 59)

- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Exploring Simple Siamese Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10566/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Feature Learning via Non-Parametric Instance-level Discrimination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01978/) (2018)
- [Reliable evaluation of adversarial robustness with an ensemble of diverse parameter-free attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01690/) (2020)
- [DeepFool: a simple and accurate method to fool deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04599/) (2015)
- [Contrastive Multiview Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05849/) (2019)
- [Obfuscated Gradients Give a False Sense of Security: Circumventing Defenses to Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00420/) (2018)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Pretext-Invariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01991/) (2019)
- [Square Attack: a query-efficient black-box adversarial attack via random search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00049/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Patch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09665/) (2017)
- [Unlabeled Data Improves Adversarial Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13736/) (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)
- [Unsupervised Scale-consistent Depth and Ego-motion Learning from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10553/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Embedding Learning via Invariant and Spreading Instance Feature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03436/) (2019)
- [D3VO: Deep Depth, Deep Pose and Deep Uncertainty for Monocular Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01060/) (2020)
- [The Temporal Opportunist: Self-Supervised Multi-Frame Monocular Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14540/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Learning for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07934/) (2018)
- [Are Labels Required for Improving Adversarial Robustness?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13725/) (2019)
- [Making an Invisibility Cloak: Real World Adversarial Attacks on Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.14667/) (2019)
- [Learning Depth from Monocular Videos using Direct Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00175/) (2017)
- [Adversarial Sensor Attack on LiDAR-based Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06826/) (2019)
- [DF-Net: Unsupervised Joint Learning of Depth and Flow using Cross-Task Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01649/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [CLUSTSEG: Clustering for Universal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02187/) (2023)
- [Mitigating the Curse of Dimensionality for Certified Robustness via Dual Randomized Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09586/) (2024)
- [Fusion is Not Enough: Single Modal Attacks on Fusion Models for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14614/) (2023)
- [PosterGen: Aesthetic-Aware Multi-Modal Paper-to-Poster Generation via Multi-Agent LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17188/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Examples in the Physical World: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01473/) (2023)
- [Learning-based 3D Reconstruction in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14537/) (2025)
- [Self-supervised Adversarial Training of Monocular Depth Estimation against Physical-World Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05857/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Robust Self-Supervised Learning Across Diverse Downstream Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12588/) (2024)
- [Improving Domain Generalization in Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation via Stabilized Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02149/) (2024)
- [Prototypical Transformer as Unified Motion Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01559/) (2024)
- [BadPart: Unified Black-box Adversarial Patch Attacks against Pixel-wise Regression Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00924/) (2024)
- [Engineering Trustworthy AI: A Developer Guide for Empirical Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19361/) (2024)
- [Certified vs. Empirical Adversarial Robust-ness via Hybrid Convolutions with Attention Stochasticity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01519/) (2026)
- [Physical Adversarial Attack on Monocular Depth Estimation via Shape-Varying Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17312/) (2024)
- [DepthVanish: Optimizing Adversarial Interval Structures for Stereo-Depth-Invisible Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16690/) (2025)
- [Pixel-Optimization-Free Patch Attack on Stereo Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17632/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Calibration Attack on Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28778/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Monocular Depth Estimation (MDE) is a critical component in applications such as autonomous driving. There are various attacks against MDE networks. These attacks, especially the physical ones, pose a great threat to the security of such systems. Traditional adversarial training method requires ground-truth labels hence cannot be directly applied to self-supervised MDE that does not have ground-truth depth. Some self-supervised model hardening techniques (e.g., contrastive learning) ignore the domain knowledge of MDE and can hardly achieve optimal performance. In this work, we propose a novel adversarial training method for self-supervised MDE models based on view synthesis without using ground-truth depth. We improve adversarial robustness against physical-world attacks using L0-norm-bounded perturbation in training. We compare our method with supervised learning based and contrastive learning based methods that are tailored for MDE. Results on two representative MDE networks show that we achieve better robustness against various adversarial attacks with nearly no benign performance degradation.
