From 17a690e0481ac4248f68b40a033b30a8b061bf99 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: CarolinePascal <caroline8.pascal@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:04:48 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] fix(TIFF vs. pytorch): adding an extra uint16 to float32
 conversion for depth maps stored as raw TIFF images

---
 src/lerobot/datasets/io_utils.py | 29 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/lerobot/datasets/io_utils.py b/src/lerobot/datasets/io_utils.py
index eaae0d40f..868a114f5 100644
--- a/src/lerobot/datasets/io_utils.py
+++ b/src/lerobot/datasets/io_utils.py
@@ -248,12 +248,28 @@ def load_image_as_numpy(
     return img_array
 
 
+# PIL modes for 16-bit unsigned depth maps.
+UINT16_PIL_MODES = {"I;16", "I;16B", "I;16L"}
+
+
+def pil_to_chw_tensor(img: PILImage.Image) -> torch.Tensor:
+    """Convert a PIL image to a channel-first tensor.
+
+    ``uint16`` depth maps become ``float32 (1, H, W)`` in native units (``ToTensor``
+    would overflow them to ``int16``); all other modes use the standard ``ToTensor`` path.
+    """
+    if img.mode in UINT16_PIL_MODES:
+        return torch.from_numpy(np.array(img, dtype=np.float32))[None, ...]
+    return transforms.ToTensor()(img)
+
+
 def hf_transform_to_torch(items_dict: dict[str, list[Any]]) -> dict[str, list[torch.Tensor | str]]:
     """Convert a batch from a Hugging Face dataset to torch tensors.
 
     This transform function converts items from Hugging Face dataset format (pyarrow)
-    to torch tensors. Importantly, images are converted from PIL objects (H, W, C, uint8)
-    to a torch image representation (C, H, W, float32) in the range [0, 1]. Other
+    to torch tensors. RGB images are converted from PIL objects (H, W, C, uint8)
+    to a torch image representation (C, H, W, float32) in the range [0, 1]. Depth
+    maps are returned as float32 (1, H, W) in their native units. Other
     types are converted to torch.tensor.
 
     Args:
@@ -268,8 +284,7 @@ def hf_transform_to_torch(items_dict: dict[str, list[Any]]) -> dict[str, list[to
             continue
         first_item = items_dict[key][0]
         if isinstance(first_item, PILImage.Image):
-            to_tensor = transforms.ToTensor()
-            items_dict[key] = [to_tensor(img) for img in items_dict[key]]
+            items_dict[key] = [pil_to_chw_tensor(img) for img in items_dict[key]]
         elif first_item is None or isinstance(first_item, dict):
             pass
         else:
@@ -335,7 +350,11 @@ def item_to_torch(item: dict) -> dict:
     """
     skip_keys = {"task", *LANGUAGE_COLUMNS}
     for key, val in item.items():
-        if isinstance(val, (np.ndarray | list)) and key not in skip_keys:
+        if key in skip_keys:
+            continue
+        if isinstance(val, PILImage.Image):
+            item[key] = pil_to_chw_tensor(val)
+        elif isinstance(val, (np.ndarray | list)):
             # Convert numpy arrays and lists to torch tensors
             item[key] = torch.tensor(val)
     return item