# MonoMAE: Enhancing Monocular 3D Detection through Depth-Aware Masked Autoencoders

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07696 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07696/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 59 of its 74 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2024.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [CenterNet: Keypoint Triplets for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08189/) (2019)
- [PETR: Position Embedding Transformation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05625/) (2022)
- [Masked Autoencoders for Point Cloud Self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06604/) (2022)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07179/) (2018)
- [FCOS3D: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10956/) (2021)
- [Categorical Depth Distribution Network for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01100/) (2021)
- [BEVFormer v2: Adapting Modern Image Backbones to Bird's-Eye-View Recognition via Perspective Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10439/) (2022)
- [M3D-RPN: Monocular 3D Region Proposal Network for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06038/) (2019)
- [Is Pseudo-Lidar needed for Monocular 3D Object detection?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06417/) (2021)
- [Disentangling Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12365/) (2019)
- [SMOKE: Single-Stage Monocular 3D Object Detection via Keypoint Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10111/) (2020)
- [Objects are Different: Flexible Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02323/) (2021)
- [Learning Depth-Guided Convolutions for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04799/) (2019)
- [Geometry Uncertainty Projection Network for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13774/) (2021)
- [MonoPair: Monocular 3D Object Detection Using Pairwise Spatial Relationships](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00504/) (2020)
- [Learning 3D Representations from 2D Pre-trained Models via Image-to-Point Masked Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06785/) (2022)
- [Delving into Localization Errors for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16237/) (2021)
- [Accurate Monocular Object Detection via Color-Embedded 3D Reconstruction for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11444/) (2019)
- [Kinematic 3D Object Detection in Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09548/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Unleashing the Power of Chain-of-Prediction for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04594/) (2025)
- [Towards Intrinsic-Aware Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27059/) (2026)
- [Unveiling the Invisible: Reasoning Complex Occlusions Amodally with AURA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10225/) (2025)
- [MonoCLUE : Object-Aware Clustering Enhances Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07862/) (2025)
- [IDEAL-M3D: Instance Diversity-Enriched Active Learning for Monocular 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19301/) (2025)
- [LeAD-M3D: Leveraging Asymmetric Distillation for Real-Time Monocular 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05663/) (2025)
- [Efficient Strategy Learning by Decoupling Searching and Pathfinding for Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14103/) (2024)
- [Revisiting Monocular 3D Object Detection with Depth Thickness Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19165/) (2024)
- [BEAT: Balanced Frequency Adaptive Tuning for Long-Term Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19065/) (2025)
- [MonoVQD: Monocular 3D Object Detection with Variational Query Denoising and Self-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14835/) (2025)
- [Difficulty-Aware Label-Guided Denoising for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13195/) (2025)
- [LAA3D: A Benchmark of Detecting and Tracking Low-Altitude Aircraft in 3D Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19057/) (2025)
- [Auto-Vocabulary 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16077/) (2025)
- [MonoPRIO: Adaptive Prior Conditioning for Unified Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14781/) (2026)
- [RefineAny3D: Depth Refinement as Semantic Alignment for Monocular 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09147/) (2026)
- [MonoMIP: Multi-Height Inverse Perspective Mapping for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19071/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Monocular 3D object detection aims for precise 3D localization and identification of objects from a single-view image. Despite its recent progress, it often struggles while handling pervasive object occlusions that tend to complicate and degrade the prediction of object dimensions, depths, and orientations. We design MonoMAE, a monocular 3D detector inspired by Masked Autoencoders that addresses the object occlusion issue by masking and reconstructing objects in the feature space. MonoMAE consists of two novel designs. The first is depth-aware masking that selectively masks certain parts of non-occluded object queries in the feature space for simulating occluded object queries for network training. It masks non-occluded object queries by balancing the masked and preserved query portions adaptively according to the depth information. The second is lightweight query completion that works with the depth-aware masking to learn to reconstruct and complete the masked object queries. With the proposed object occlusion and completion, MonoMAE learns enriched 3D representations that achieve superior monocular 3D detection performance qualitatively and quantitatively for both occluded and non-occluded objects. Additionally, MonoMAE learns generalizable representations that can work well in new domains.