# ToFormer: Towards Large-scale Scenario Depth Completion for Lightweight ToF Camera

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20669 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20669/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08415/) (2016)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Deformable Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06211/) (2017)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [VINS-Mono: A Robust and Versatile Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03852/) (2017)
- [XCiT: Cross-Covariance Image Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09681/) (2021)
- [Sparsity Invariant CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06500/) (2017)
- [DIODE: A Dense Indoor and Outdoor DEpth Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00463/) (2019)
- [Non-Local Spatial Propagation Network for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10042/) (2020)
- [Understanding Convolution for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08502/) (2017)
- [Sparse-to-Dense: Depth Prediction from Sparse Depth Samples and a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07492/) (2017)
- [PENet: Towards Precise and Efficient Image Guided Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00783/) (2021)
- [Learning Guided Convolutional Network for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01238/) (2019)
- [Depth Estimation via Affinity Learned with Convolutional Spatial Propagation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00150/) (2018)
- [CSPN++: Learning Context and Resource Aware Convolutional Spatial Propagation Networks for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05377/) (2019)
- [CompletionFormer: Depth Completion with Convolutions and Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13030/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Depth Completion from Visual Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08616/) (2019)
- [T"oRF: Time-of-Flight Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scene View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15271/) (2021)
- [Sparse and noisy LiDAR completion with RGB guidance and uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.05356/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Spatial Propagation Network for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09769/) (2022)
- [Adaptive Context-Aware Multi-Modal Network for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10833/) (2020)
- [Bilateral Propagation Network for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11270/) (2024)
- [EGO-Planner: An ESDF-free Gradient-based Local Planner for Quadrotors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08835/) (2020)
- [R3LIVE: A Robust, Real-time, RGB-colored, LiDAR-Inertial-Visual tightly-coupled state Estimation and mapping package](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07982/) (2021)
- [Marigold-DC: Zero-Shot Monocular Depth Completion with Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13389/) (2024)
- [Pixel-level Extrinsic Self Calibration of High Resolution LiDAR and Camera in Targetless Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01627/) (2021)
- [LRRU: Long-short Range Recurrent Updating Networks for Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08956/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras possess compact design and high measurement precision to be applied to various robot tasks. However, their limited sensing range restricts deployment in large-scale scenarios. Depth completion has emerged as a potential solution to expand the sensing range of ToF cameras, but existing research lacks dedicated datasets and struggles to generalize to ToF measurements. In this paper, we propose a full-stack framework that enables depth completion in large-scale scenarios for short-range ToF cameras. First, we construct a multi-sensor platform with a reconstruction-based pipeline to collect real-world ToF samples with dense large-scale ground truth, yielding the first LArge-ScalE scenaRio ToF depth completion dataset (LASER-ToF). Second, we propose a sensor-aware depth completion network that incorporates a novel 3D branch with a 3D-2D Joint Propagation Pooling (JPP) module and Multimodal Cross-Covariance Attention (MXCA), enabling effective modeling of long-range relationships and efficient 3D-2D fusion under non-uniform ToF depth sparsity. Moreover, our network can utilize the sparse point cloud from visual SLAM as a supplement to ToF depth to further improve prediction accuracy. Experiments show that our method achieves an 8.6% lower mean absolute error than the second-best method, while maintaining lightweight design to support onboard deployment. Finally, to verify the system's applicability on real robots, we deploy proposed method on a quadrotor at a 10Hz runtime, enabling reliable large-scale mapping and long-range planning in challenging environments for short-range ToF cameras.