# DrivingDepth: Sparse-Prompted Pixel-wise Scale Correction for Driving Depth Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.31488 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31488/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (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)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Deep Ordinal Regression Network for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02446/) (2018)
- [Depth Anything 3: Recovering the Visual Space from Any Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10647/) (2025)
- [AdaBins: Depth Estimation using Adaptive Bins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14141/) (2020)
- [Continuous 3D Perception Model with Persistent State](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12387/) (2025)
- [3D Packing for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02693/) (2019)
- [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)
- [From Big to Small: Multi-Scale Local Planar Guidance for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10326/) (2019)
- [UniDepth: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18913/) (2024)
- [π3: Permutation-Equivariant Visual Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13347/) (2025)
- [MapAnything: Universal Feed-Forward Metric 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13414/) (2025)
- [MoGe: Unlocking Accurate Monocular Geometry Estimation for Open-Domain Images with Optimal Training Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19115/) (2024)
- [MoGe-2: Accurate Monocular Geometry with Metric Scale and Sharp Details](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02546/) (2025)
- [Learning Depth from Single Monocular Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.07411/) (2015)
- [TTT3R: 3D Reconstruction as Test-Time Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26645/) (2025)
- [FastVGGT: Training-Free Acceleration of Visual Geometry Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02560/) (2025)
- [CompletionFormer: Depth Completion with Convolutions and Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13030/) (2023)
- [Estimating Depth from Monocular Images as Classification Using Deep Fully Convolutional Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.02305/) (2016)
- [SurroundDepth: Entangling Surrounding Views for Self-Supervised Multi-Camera Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03636/) (2022)
- [Prompting Depth Anything for 4K Resolution Accurate Metric Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14015/) (2024)
- [DrivingForward: Feed-forward 3D Gaussian Splatting for Driving Scene Reconstruction from Flexible Surround-view Input](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12753/) (2024)
- [DiST-4D: Disentangled Spatiotemporal Diffusion with Metric Depth for 4D Driving Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15208/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dense depth estimation for autonomous driving faces a geometry-scale conflict: depth foundation models deliver pixel-aligned dense visual geometry without reliable metric scale, while projected LiDAR provides metric anchors that are sparse, noisy, and misaligned with image structures. Existing sparse-prompted methods incorporate LiDAR by regenerating depth from scratch, overriding the foundation model's coherent geometry and producing structural artifacts on visually continuous surfaces. Our key insight is that foundation models already capture geometrically coherent relative depth; no additional surface structure learning is required-only a per-pixel scale factor mapping relative geometry to metric coordinates. Based on this, we propose DrivingDepth, which treats sparse LiDAR as geometric prompts that locally calibrate a frozen foundation prior through residual pixel-wise scale correction, preserving dense visual geometry by construction. On nuScenes with 4-frame surround-view input, DrivingDepth achieves an AbsRel of 11.19 and an EdgeCR of 5.741, outperforming MapAnything (11.99/1.914) by simultaneously delivering SOTA metric accuracy and geometric consistency.