# LuMon: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Development Suite with Novel Datasets for Lunar Monocular Depth Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09352 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09352/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10647/) (2025)
- [Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02073/) (2024)
- [Metric3Dv2: A Versatile Monocular Geometric Foundation Model for Zero-shot Metric Depth and Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15506/) (2024)
- [MapAnything: Universal Feed-Forward Metric 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13414/) (2025)
- [MoGe-2: Accurate Monocular Geometry with Metric Scale and Sharp Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02546/) (2025)
- [Video Depth Anything: Consistent Depth Estimation for Super-Long Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12375/) (2025)
- [DepthCrafter: Generating Consistent Long Depth Sequences for Open-world Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02095/) (2024)
- [MiDaS v3.1 -- A Model Zoo for Robust Monocular Relative Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14460/) (2023)
- [FoundationStereo: Zero-Shot Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09898/) (2025)
- [UniDepthV2: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimation Made Simpler](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20110/) (2025)
- [Lotus: Diffusion-based Visual Foundation Model for High-quality Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18124/) (2024)
- [PoseDiffusion: Solving Pose Estimation via Diffusion-aided Bundle Adjustment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15667/) (2023)
- [Evaluation of CNN-based Single-Image Depth Estimation Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01328/) (2018)
- [Toward Hierarchical Self-Supervised Monocular Absolute Depth Estimation for Autonomous Driving Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05560/) (2020)
- [Relative Pose Estimation through Affine Corrections of Monocular Depth Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05446/) (2025)
- [Deep Learning-based Depth Estimation Methods from Monocular Image and Videos: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19675/) (2024)
- [Depth Anything at Any Condition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01634/) (2025)
- [MetricAnything: Scaling Metric Depth Pretraining with Noisy Heterogeneous Sources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22054/) (2026)
- [Challenges of SLAM in extremely unstructured environments: the DLR Planetary Stereo, Solid-State LiDAR, Inertial Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06815/) (2022)
- [The Fourth Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17787/) (2025)
- [LuSNAR:A Lunar Segmentation, Navigation and Reconstruction Dataset based on Muti-sensor for Autonomous Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06512/) (2024)
- [Icy Moon Surface Simulation and Stereo Depth Estimation for Sampling Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12414/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Boosting Metric Depth Completion via Training-Free Adaptive Response Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36168/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Monocular Depth Estimation (MDE) is crucial for autonomous lunar rover navigation using electro-optical cameras. However, deploying terrestrial MDE networks to the Moon brings a severe domain gap due to harsh shadows, textureless regolith, and zero atmospheric scattering. Existing evaluations rely on analogs that fail to replicate these conditions and lack actual metric ground truth. To address this, we present LuMon, a comprehensive benchmarking framework to evaluate MDE methods for lunar exploration. We introduce novel datasets featuring high-quality stereo ground truth depth from the real Chang'e-3 mission and the CHERI dark analog dataset. Utilizing this framework, we conduct a systematic zero-shot evaluation of state-of-the-art architectures across synthetic, analog, and real datasets. We rigorously assess performance against mission critical challenges like craters, rocks, extreme shading, and varying depth ranges. Furthermore, we establish a sim-to-real domain adaptation baseline by fine tuning a foundation model on synthetic data. While this adaptation yields drastic in-domain performance gains, it exhibits minimal generalization to authentic lunar imagery, highlighting a persistent cross-domain transfer gap. Our extensive analysis reveals the inherent limitations of current networks and sets a standard foundation to guide future advancements in extraterrestrial perception and domain adaptation.