Metric Depth Estimation

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Overview

Metric depth estimation seeks to recover how far surfaces are from a camera in real units, overcoming the scale ambiguity that limits relative depth for navigation and 3D reconstruction. Approaches include monocular foundation models conditioned on camera geometry, calibration with sparse LiDAR or other metric anchors, stereo and multi-view geometry, and fusion with radar, odometry, or physical optical cues. Methods are evaluated across settings such as indoor and driving scenes, fisheye and panoramic cameras, aerial imagery, and natural environments, using benchmarks including NYU Depth V2, KITTI, DIODE, and nuScenes. A central challenge is generalizing across cameras and domains while retaining accurate scale and fine structure, especially when metric anchors are sparse, noisy, or misleading and inference must remain efficient.

Latest papers

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64 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, level with the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. WildDepth-v2: A Synchronized RGB--LiDAR--Radar Dataset and Benchmark for Metric Depth, Motion, and Tracking of Wildlife

    Oct 22, 2026Muhammad Aamir, Sangyun Shin, Naoya Muramatsu +4Metric Depth EstimationWildlife Monitoring

    Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK · University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa · Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Biology, University of Oxford, UK +1

  2. Which Depth Estimator for Jetson AGX Orin? A 2026 Benchmark of Monocular and Stereo Methods

    Oct 19, 2026Leaf JiangMetric Depth EstimationMonocular Depth Estimation

    NODAR Inc.

  3. The Midas Touch for Metric Depth: Interpretable Metricization for Generalizable Depth Perception

    Oct 12, 2026Mengtan Zhang, Yu Ma, Shiqi Jiang +6Metric Depth EstimationMonocular Depth Estimation

    Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Tongji University, Shanghai 201210, P. R. China · College of Electronic & Information Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, P. R. China · Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, P. R. China +2

  4. Harnessing SPAD Noise: Test-Time Gated Attention for Indoor Depth Estimation

    Oct 11, 2026Yiquan GaoDepth EstimationMetric Depth Estimation

    Heriot-Watt University

  5. Pumpire: Unified Benchmark for Metric Distance Estimation

    Oct 8, 2026Siyu Chen, Zehan Wang, Jiayang Xu +63D Foundation ModelsMetric Depth Estimation

    Zhejiang University · Zhejiang University of Technology · Shanghai Jiaotong University

  6. PhysWAM: Physically Consistent World Action Model for Autonomous Driving

    Sep 29, 2026Dhruv Parikh, Fengcheng Yu, Quankai Gao +11Metric Depth EstimationAutonomous Driving

    University of Southern California · Woven by Toyota · Toyota Research Institute +1

  7. Depth Any Seen: Which Surfaces and How Far?

    Sep 25, 2026Xiaohao Xu, Xiaonan HuangDepth EstimationMetric Depth Estimation

    Robotics Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  8. DepthEvidence: Unifying Metric Depth Prediction and Geometric Reasoning in Multimodal Language Models

    Sep 25, 2026Jiangning Wei, Yuan Yao, Miaomiao Cui +43D VLMsVLM Reasoning

    Alibaba Token Hub, Alibaba Group · Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

  9. FounRef: Robust, Structure-Preserving, and Fast Metric Refinement of Frozen Monocular Foundation Priors with Sparse Anchors

    Sep 24, 2026Dan Halperin, Mirko MählischMetric Depth EstimationDepth Completion

    University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Germany

  10. RIDE: Relocalization-Informed Depth Estimation with 3D Gaussian Splatting

    Sep 10, 2026Jiarong Lian, Zhe Xiao, Zhaoyang Zhang +2Metric Depth EstimationRobotic Perception

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · Carnegie Mellon University

  11. GRADE: Single-Frame Generative Radar Depth Estimation Under Visual Degradation

    Sep 9, 2026Bin Zhao, Patrick Chiou, Nakul GargMetric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    Rice University

  12. Monocular Depth Estimation from a Single Image: Progress and Opportunities

    Sep 1, 2026Muxin Liu, Xiaoyang Lyu, Yang-Tian Sun +4Metric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077.

  13. RbFT-Net: Rectify-Before-Fuse Temporal Radar Anchors for 4D Radar-Camera Depth Completion

    Aug 13, 2026Wentao Zhao, Shouxuan Wu, Yongtao Cen +3Camera-Radar FusionMetric Depth Estimation

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China · School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China · 3State Key Laboratory of Advanced Rail Autonomous Operation and School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

  14. Dense Metric Depth Completion from Sparse Direct Time-of-Flight Sensors

    Aug 5, 2026Hakyeong Kim, Ruicheng Wang, Chengtang Yao +2Metric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    KAIST · USTC · Microsoft Research Asia

  15. DVPSFormer: Efficient Online Depth-aware Video Panoptic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving

    Jul 28, 2026Yung-Hsu Yang, Luigi Piccinelli, Siyuan Li +8Panoptic SegmentationMetric Depth Estimation

    1ETH Zürich · 2INSAIT, Sofia University · University of Bonn +1

  16. JustDepth: Real-Time Radar-Camera Depth Estimation with Single-Scan LiDAR Supervision

    Jul 24, 2026Wooyung Yun, Dongwook Kim, Soomok LeeCamera-Radar FusionMetric Depth Estimation

    Department of Artificial Intelligence, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Republic of Korea · Faculty of Department of Computer Science, Kennesaw State University, Marietta GA, 30060, United States

  17. Metric Surface Reconstruction of Neurosurgical Scenes from Monocular Operating Microscope Images and Microscope Pose

    Jul 24, 2026Thomas Bucher, Didier Neuenschwander, Thomas Petutschnigg +4Metric Depth Estimation3D Reconstruction

    Neuro Robotics Group, ARTORG Center, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland · Department of Neurosurgery, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

  18. DepthART: Scaling Foundation Monocular Depth to Tiny Models

    Jul 19, 2026Feng Xue, Wu Chen, Mingshuai Zhao +7Metric Depth EstimationMonocular Depth Estimation

    University of Trento Trento, Italy · Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong, China +1

  19. DROID-ANCHOR: Odometry-Anchored Recurrent Metric Depth Estimation

    Jul 19, 2026Yuxuan Chen, Brook DuSimultaneous Localization and MappingBundle Adjustment

    UC Berkeley

  20. Geometric Distillation from Rectified Stereo: Leveraging Epipolar Cues for Monocular Depth

    Jul 17, 2026Jung-Hee Kim, Xiaoming LiuMetric Depth EstimationMonocular Depth Estimation

    Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA

  21. X-Lens: Real-Time Metric Depth Estimation with Heterogeneous Cameras

    Jul 14, 2026Heng Zhou, Shuhong Liu, Yonghao He +6Multi-View Depth EstimationMetric Depth Estimation

    1D-Robotics · 2The University of Tokyo · 3Soochow University

  22. Repairing Shape-Prior Shortcuts in Long-Range Single-Shot Fringe Projection Profilometry

    Jul 10, 2026Adam Haroon, Cody Fleming, Beiwen LiFringe Projection ProfilometryMetric Depth Estimation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, 2529 Union Drive, Ames, 50011, Iowa, USA · College of Engineering, University of Georgia, 597 D. W. Brooks Drive, Athens, 30602, Georgia, USA

  23. RASR: Range-Aware Scale Recovery for Metric UAV Navigation

    Jul 10, 2026Hongtao Liang, Xinyu Shao, Chenxu Wang +5Visual NavigationMetric Depth Estimation

    College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China · Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, China · 3Noah Ark Lab, Huawei, China +3

  24. The Multipath Blind Spot: KK-Agnostic Robust Calibration for Sparse-Anchor Metric Depth from Frozen Foundations

    Jul 5, 2026Sohag Roy, Rajesh Misra, Swami Shastravidyananda +1Post-Hoc CalibrationMetric Depth Estimation

    Department of Computer Science, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI), Belur, Howrah, West Bengal 711202, India

  25. FoundDP: Revisiting Weak Disparity Observability in Dual-Pixel Depth Estimation

    Jul 2, 2026Fengchen He, Hao Xu, Dayang Zhao +2Metric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

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

    Jun 30, 2026Chi Huang, Wenhao Zhang, Hang Yin +5Metric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    Baidu Inc.

  27. AerialMetric: Benchmarking and Adapting UAV Monocular Metric Depth Estimation in the Real World

    Jun 29, 2026Zhongqiang Song, Guanying Chen, Yuqi Zhang +6Metric Depth EstimationMonocular Depth Estimation

    Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen Campus · 1Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen Campus · FNii–Shenzhen +5

  28. Double-Helix Active Geometry: LiDAR-Anchored Multi-View Depth with Selective Abstention

    Jun 28, 2026Jinwen WenMulti-View Depth EstimationMulti-View Geometry

    Independent Researcher

  29. SurroundNEXO: Ego-Centric Metric Bridging for Spatially Consistent Geometry in Autonomous Driving

    Jun 15, 2026Shuai Yuan, Runxi Tang, Yuzhou Ji +8Multi-View Depth EstimationMulti-View Consistency

    School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 2Hello Inc.

  30. DepthMaster: Unified Monocular Depth Estimation for Perspective and Panoramic Images

    Jun 10, 2026Pengfei Wang, Shihao Wang, Liyi Chen +3Metric Depth EstimationDepth Estimation

    Visual Computing Lab The Hong Kong Polytechnic University