# NeuFlow v2: Push High-Efficiency Optical Flow To the Limit

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10161 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10161/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06852/) (2015)
- [PWC-Net: CNNs for Optical Flow Using Pyramid, Warping, and Cost Volume](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.02371/) (2017)
- [A Large Dataset to Train Convolutional Networks for Disparity, Optical Flow, and Scene Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02134/) (2015)
- [FlowNet 2.0: Evolution of Optical Flow Estimation with Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01925/) (2016)
- [TartanAir: A Dataset to Push the Limits of Visual SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14338/) (2020)
- [Optical Flow Estimation using a Spatial Pyramid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.00850/) (2016)
- [GMFlow: Learning Optical Flow via Global Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13680/) (2021)
- [FlowFormer: A Transformer Architecture for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16194/) (2022)
- [Unifying Flow, Stereo and Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05783/) (2022)
- [Learning to Estimate Hidden Motions with Global Motion Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02409/) (2021)
- [SEA-RAFT: Simple, Efficient, Accurate RAFT for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14793/) (2024)
- [Spring: A High-Resolution High-Detail Dataset and Benchmark for Scene Flow, Optical Flow and Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01943/) (2023)
- [FlowFormer++: Masked Cost Volume Autoencoding for Pretraining Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01237/) (2023)
- [CRAFT: Cross-Attentional Flow Transformer for Robust Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16896/) (2022)
- [A Lightweight Optical Flow CNN - Revisiting Data Fidelity and Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07414/) (2019)
- [Global Matching with Overlapping Attention for Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11335/) (2022)
- [SKFlow: Learning Optical Flow with Super Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14623/) (2022)
- [DIP: Deep Inverse Patchmatch for High-Resolution Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00330/) (2022)
- [LiteFlowNet3: Resolving Correspondence Ambiguity for More Accurate Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09319/) (2020)
- [FastFlowNet: A Lightweight Network for Fast Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04524/) (2021)
- [NeuFlow: Real-time, High-accuracy Optical Flow Estimation on Robots Using Edge Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10425/) (2024)
- [DCVNet: Dilated Cost Volume Networks for Fast Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17271/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [TransVLM: A Vision-Language Framework and Benchmark for Detecting Any Shot Transitions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27975/) (2026)
- [OrthoTrack: Continuous 6-DoF UAV Trajectory Estimation Anchored in Public Orthophotos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.25245/) (2026)
- [Motion-guided sparse correction enables expert-quality point tracking across diverse microscopy regimes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29220/) (2026)
- [G2SR: Geometric Methods for Fast and Memory-Efficient Gaussian-based Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14470/) (2026)
- [Stitch-Inferencer: Enhance Endoscopic Video Segmentation and Tracking via Panoramic Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14968/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Real-time high-accuracy optical flow estimation is critical for a variety of real-world robotic applications. However, current learning-based methods often struggle to balance accuracy and computational efficiency: methods that achieve high accuracy typically demand substantial processing power, while faster approaches tend to sacrifice precision. These fast approaches specifically falter in their generalization capabilities and do not perform well across diverse real-world scenarios. In this work, we revisit the limitations of the SOTA methods and present NeuFlow-V2, a novel method that offers both - high accuracy in real-world datasets coupled with low computational overhead. In particular, we introduce a novel light-weight backbone and a fast refinement module to keep computational demands tractable while delivering accurate optical flow. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that NeuFlow-V2 provides similar accuracy to SOTA methods while achieving 10x-70x speedups. It is capable of running at over 20 FPS on 512x384 resolution images on a Jetson Orin Nano. The full training and evaluation code is available at https://github.com/neufieldrobotics/NeuFlow_v2.
