Generally, this disclosure provides systems, devices, methods and computer readable media for a depth camera with ML techniques for recognition of patches within an SL pattern. The system may include a projection module to project an ML-based SL pattern onto a scene; a camera to receive an image of the SL pattern reflected from the scene; a patch recognition and location module to generate a descriptor vector for a patch segmented from the received image and to query an ML system with the descriptor vector, the ML system configured to provide a patch label associated with the descriptor vector, the patch label comprising a location of the patch relative to the projected SL pattern; and a depth estimation module to triangulate a distance between the camera and a region of the scene associated with the patch based on the location of the patch relative to the projected SL pattern.