Depth Estimation

Monocular Depth Estimation with MiDaS and DPT

A single RGB camera records image coordinates and color, not the physical distance from the lens to every visible surface. Monocular depth models infer the missing depth structure from visual evidence learned during training. That distinction matters when using MiDaS or DPT: a convincing depth map does not automatically mean that pixel values are distances in meters. MiDaS is an open-source project for robust monocular relative depth estimation. DPT, or Dense Prediction Transformer, is an architecture for dense prediction that has also been used as a backbone in MiDaS models. Both make single-camera depth estimation practical, but neither changes the geometric ambiguity inherent in one unconstrained RGB image.