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Main Authors: Li, Junjie, Wang, Jiawei, Li, Miyu, Liu, Yu, Wang, Yumei, Xu, Haitao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14159
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author Li, Junjie
Wang, Jiawei
Li, Miyu
Liu, Yu
Wang, Yumei
Xu, Haitao
author_facet Li, Junjie
Wang, Jiawei
Li, Miyu
Liu, Yu
Wang, Yumei
Xu, Haitao
contents Depth estimation plays a great potential role in obstacle avoidance and navigation for further Mars exploration missions. Compared to traditional stereo matching, learning-based stereo depth estimation provides a data-driven approach to infer dense and precise depth maps from stereo image pairs. However, these methods always suffer performance degradation in environments with sparse textures and lacking geometric constraints, such as the unstructured terrain of Mars. To address these challenges, we propose M3Depth, a depth estimation model tailored for Mars rovers. Considering the sparse and smooth texture of Martian terrain, which is primarily composed of low-frequency features, our model incorporates a convolutional kernel based on wavelet transform that effectively captures low-frequency response and expands the receptive field. Additionally, we introduce a consistency loss that explicitly models the complementary relationship between depth map and surface normal map, utilizing the surface normal as a geometric constraint to enhance the accuracy of depth estimation. Besides, a pixel-wise refinement module with mutual boosting mechanism is designed to iteratively refine both depth and surface normal predictions. Experimental results on synthetic Mars datasets with depth annotations show that M3Depth achieves a 16% improvement in depth estimation accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art methods in depth estimation. Furthermore, the model demonstrates strong applicability in real-world Martian scenarios, offering a promising solution for future Mars exploration missions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_14159
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle M3Depth: Wavelet-Enhanced Depth Estimation on Mars via Mutual Boosting of Dual-Modal Data
Li, Junjie
Wang, Jiawei
Li, Miyu
Liu, Yu
Wang, Yumei
Xu, Haitao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
Depth estimation plays a great potential role in obstacle avoidance and navigation for further Mars exploration missions. Compared to traditional stereo matching, learning-based stereo depth estimation provides a data-driven approach to infer dense and precise depth maps from stereo image pairs. However, these methods always suffer performance degradation in environments with sparse textures and lacking geometric constraints, such as the unstructured terrain of Mars. To address these challenges, we propose M3Depth, a depth estimation model tailored for Mars rovers. Considering the sparse and smooth texture of Martian terrain, which is primarily composed of low-frequency features, our model incorporates a convolutional kernel based on wavelet transform that effectively captures low-frequency response and expands the receptive field. Additionally, we introduce a consistency loss that explicitly models the complementary relationship between depth map and surface normal map, utilizing the surface normal as a geometric constraint to enhance the accuracy of depth estimation. Besides, a pixel-wise refinement module with mutual boosting mechanism is designed to iteratively refine both depth and surface normal predictions. Experimental results on synthetic Mars datasets with depth annotations show that M3Depth achieves a 16% improvement in depth estimation accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art methods in depth estimation. Furthermore, the model demonstrates strong applicability in real-world Martian scenarios, offering a promising solution for future Mars exploration missions.
title M3Depth: Wavelet-Enhanced Depth Estimation on Mars via Mutual Boosting of Dual-Modal Data
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14159