mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

BlinkFlow: A Dataset to Push the Limits of Event-based Optical Flow Estimation

arXiv 2303.07716 ↗First posted 14 Mar 2023cs.CVcited by 33

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Abstract (arXiv)

Event cameras provide high temporal precision, low data rates, and high dynamic range visual perception, which are well-suited for optical flow estimation. While data-driven optical flow estimation has obtained great success in RGB cameras, its generalization performance is seriously hindered in event cameras mainly due to the limited and biased training data. In this paper, we present a novel simulator, BlinkSim, for the fast generation of large-scale data for event-based optical flow. BlinkSim incorporates a configurable rendering engine alongside an event simulation suite. By leveraging the wealth of current 3D assets, the rendering engine enables us to automatically build up thousands of scenes with different objects, textures, and motion patterns and render very high-frequency images for realistic event data simulation. Based on BlinkSim, we construct a large training dataset and evaluation benchmark BlinkFlow that contains sufficient, diversiform, and challenging event data with optical flow ground truth. Experiments show that BlinkFlow improves the generalization performance of state-of-the-art methods by more than 40% on average and up to 90%. Moreover, we further propose an Event-based optical Flow transFormer (E-FlowFormer) architecture. Powered by our BlinkFlow, E-FlowFormer outperforms the SOTA methods by up to 91% on the MVSEC dataset and 14% on the DSEC dataset and presents the best generalization performance. The source code and data are available at https://zju3dv.github.io/blinkflow/.

Key facts. Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 30 of its 49 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2023.

Builds on

30 of 49 references.

References · 30

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,498
  3. 2015ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repositorycited by 2,880
  4. 2020RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flowcited by 2,385
  5. 2019SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networkscited by 1,437
  6. 2015FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networkscited by 1,054
  7. 2019Event-based Vision: A Surveycited by 1,010
  8. 2017PWC-Net: CNNs for Optical Flow Using Pyramid, Warping, and Cost Volumecited by 966
  9. 2015A Large Dataset to Train Convolutional Networks for Disparity, Optical Flow, and Scene Flow Estimationcited by 878
  10. 2022Google Scanned Objects: A High-Quality Dataset of 3D Scanned Household Itemscited by 601
  11. 2021Twins: Revisiting the Design of Spatial Attention in Vision Transformerscited by 565
  12. 2020TartanAir: A Dataset to Push the Limits of Visual SLAMcited by 494
18 more
  1. 2017Super SloMo: High Quality Estimation of Multiple Intermediate Frames for Video Interpolationcited by 321
  2. 2018Unsupervised Event-based Learning of Optical Flow, Depth, and Egomotioncited by 304
  3. 2021DSEC: A Stereo Event Camera Dataset for Driving Scenarioscited by 297
  4. 2022FlowFormer: A Transformer Architecture for Optical Flowcited by 273
  5. 2018The Multi Vehicle Stereo Event Camera Dataset: An Event Camera Dataset for 3D Perceptioncited by 251
  6. 2018EV-FlowNet: Self-Supervised Optical Flow Estimation for Event-based Camerascited by 223
  7. 2019Video to Events: Recycling Video Datasets for Event Camerascited by 162
  8. 2021E-RAFT: Dense Optical Flow from Event Camerascited by 149
  9. 2018Asynchronous, Photometric Feature Tracking using Events and Framescited by 118
  10. 2023FlowFormer++: Masked Cost Volume Autoencoding for Pretraining Optical Flow Estimationcited by 114
  11. 2020Spike-FlowNet: Event-based Optical Flow Estimation with Energy-Efficient Hybrid Neural Networkscited by 98
  12. 2022Secrets of Event-Based Optical Flowcited by 92
  13. 2021Spatio-Temporal Recurrent Networks for Event-Based Optical Flow Estimationcited by 50
  14. 2023Optical flow estimation from event-based cameras and spiking neural networkscited by 33
  15. 2020Distance Surface for Event-Based Optical Flowcited by 29
  16. 2022DELTAR: Depth Estimation from a Light-weight ToF Sensor and RGB Imagecited by 26
  17. 2021Event Guided Depth Sensingcited by 14
  18. 2021Autonomous Quadrotor Flight despite Rotor Failure with Onboard Vision Sensors: Frames vs. Eventscited by 12

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 4; 2024: 12; 2025: 12; 2026: 5.

33 papers.

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  1. 2023VideoFlow: Exploiting Temporal Cues for Multi-frame Optical Flow Estimationcited by 82
  2. 2024OpenESS: Event-based Semantic Scene Understanding with Open Vocabulariescited by 37
  3. 2023Event Camera Data Dense Pre-trainingcited by 21
  4. 2024EventHDR: from Event to High-Speed HDR Videos and Beyondcited by 16
  5. 2023Towards Anytime Optical Flow Estimation with Event Camerascited by 15
  6. 2024SEVD: Synthetic Event-based Vision Dataset for Ego and Fixed Traffic Perceptioncited by 15
  7. 2024BlinkVision: A Benchmark for Optical Flow, Scene Flow and Point Tracking Estimation using RGB Frames and Eventscited by 13
  8. 2025EventVL: Understand Event Streams via Multimodal Large Language Modelcited by 13
  9. 2025Unsupervised Joint Learning of Optical Flow and Intensity with Event Camerascited by 10
  10. 2023Context-PIPs: Persistent Independent Particles Demands Spatial Context Featurescited by 9
  11. 2024ETAP: Event-based Tracking of Any Pointcited by 9
  12. 2024ETO:Efficient Transformer-based Local Feature Matching by Organizing Multiple Homography Hypothesescited by 6
21 more
  1. 2024EMatch: A Unified Framework for Event-based Optical Flow and Stereo Matchingcited by 5
  2. 2024Learning Normal Flow Directly From Event Neighborhoodscited by 5
  3. 2025EDCFlow: Exploring Temporally Dense Difference Maps for Event-based Optical Flow Estimationcited by 5
  4. 2024Vector-Symbolic Architecture for Event-Based Optical Flowcited by 4
  5. 2024BlinkTrack: Feature Tracking over 80 FPS via Events and Imagescited by 4
  6. 2025V2V: Scaling Event-Based Vision through Efficient Video-to-Voxel Simulationcited by 4
  7. 2025Learning Efficient Meshflow and Optical Flow from Event Camerascited by 4
  8. 2024A Global Depth-Range-Free Multi-View Stereo Transformer Network with Pose Embeddingcited by 3
  9. 2025Hardware, Algorithms, and Applications of the Neuromorphic Vision Sensor: a Reviewcited by 3
  10. 2025Event Camera Guided Visual Media Restoration & 3D Reconstruction: A Surveycited by 3
  11. 2025Perturbed State Space Feature Encoders for Optical Flow with Event Camerascited by 2
  12. 2025TESPEC: Temporally-Enhanced Self-Supervised Pretraining for Event Camerascited by 2
  13. 2025EventTracer: Fast Path Tracing-based Event Stream Renderingcited by 2
  14. 2024SDformerFlow: Spatiotemporal swin spikeformer for event-based optical flow estimationcited by 1
  15. 2025EvtSlowTV -- A Large and Diverse Dataset for Event-Based Depth Estimationcited by 1
  16. 2026TAPFormer: Robust Arbitrary Point Tracking via Transient Asynchronous Fusion of Frames and Eventscited by 1
  17. 2026From Contrast to Consistency: Rethinking Event-based Continuous-Time Optical Flow Estimationcited by 1
  18. 2025Spatio-Temporal State Space Model For Efficient Event-Based Optical Flowcited by 0
  19. 2026UEOF: A Benchmark Dataset for Underwater Event-Based Optical Flowcited by 0
  20. 2026EventHub: Data Factory for Generalizable Event-Based Stereo Networks without Active Sensorscited by 0
  21. 2026E-WAVE: Event-based Continuous Optical Flow via Warping-Aligned Visual Encodingcited by 0