Enhancing Monocular Height Estimation from Aerial Images with Street-view Images

Abstract

Accurate height estimation from monocular aerial imagery presents a significant challenge due to its inherently ill-posed nature. This limitation is rooted in the absence of adequate geometric constraints available to the model when training with monocular imagery. Without additional geometric information to supplement the monocular image data, the model's ability to provide reliable estimations is compromised. In this paper, we propose a method that enhances monocular height estimation by incorporating street-view images. Our insight is that street-view images provide a distinct viewing perspective and rich structural details of the scene, serving as geometric constraints to enhance the performance of monocular height estimation. Specifically, we aim to optimize an implicit 3D scene representation, density field, with geometry constraints from street-view images, thereby improving the accuracy and robustness of height estimation. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method, outperforming the baseline and offering significant improvements in terms of accuracy and structural consistency.