Efficient Object Detection on Fisheye Surround-View Cameras for Automated Driving

Główne pojęcia

A novel object detection model, FisheyeDetNet, is proposed that can efficiently represent objects on fisheye surround-view cameras using rotated bounding boxes, ellipses, and polygons, outperforming standard bounding box representations.

Streszczenie

This paper addresses the challenge of object detection on fisheye surround-view cameras used in autonomous driving applications. Standard bounding box representations fail to accurately capture objects due to the heavy radial distortion in fisheye images, particularly at the periphery.
The authors propose a novel model called FisheyeDetNet that extends the YOLO object detection framework to support various object representations beyond just bounding boxes, including rotated bounding boxes, ellipses, and polygons. These representations are designed to better capture the distorted shapes of objects in fisheye images.
The authors evaluate the performance of these different representations on a large-scale fisheye dataset for autonomous driving, comprising 60K images from 4 surround-view cameras across diverse geographical regions. The results show that the polygon representation achieves the best performance, with a mAP of 49.5%, outperforming standard bounding boxes.
The paper also highlights practical failure cases, such as missing parking spots, that can be addressed by using the appropriate object representation. The proposed FisheyeDetNet model is designed to be efficient and suitable for deployment on low-power automotive hardware, making it a promising solution for real-world autonomous driving applications.

Statystyki

The dataset used in this study comprises 60,000 images captured from 4 surround-view cameras across Europe, North America, and Asia.
The majority of vehicles and pedestrians are within 20 meters of the ego vehicle.

Cytaty

"Objects go though serious deformations due to radial distortion in fisheye images and box representation fails in many practical scenarios."
"A correctly detected but improperly represented objects can result in failure cases like missing a parking spot or in non-optimal path planning."

Kluczowe wnioski z

FisheyeDetNet: Object Detection on Fisheye Surround View Camera Systems for Automated Driving

by Ganesh Sistu... o arxiv.org 04-23-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13443.pdf

Głębsze pytania

How can the proposed FisheyeDetNet model be extended to handle other types of objects beyond vehicles and pedestrians, such as traffic signs, road markings, or dynamic obstacles

To extend the FisheyeDetNet model to handle other types of objects beyond vehicles and pedestrians, such as traffic signs, road markings, or dynamic obstacles, several modifications and enhancements can be implemented:

Additional Object Classes: The model can be trained on a more diverse dataset that includes annotations for various object classes like traffic signs, road markings, and dynamic obstacles. By expanding the dataset and including these classes in the training process, the model can learn to detect and segment these objects effectively.

Multi-Task Learning: Implementing a multi-task learning approach can enable the model to simultaneously perform object detection for multiple classes. By incorporating different output heads for each object class, the model can learn to detect and segment a wider range of objects in the fisheye images.

Fine-Tuning and Transfer Learning: Fine-tuning the pre-trained FisheyeDetNet model on a dataset specifically focused on the new object classes can help adapt the model to recognize and segment these objects. Transfer learning techniques can also be employed to leverage the knowledge learned from detecting vehicles and pedestrians to improve the detection of new object classes.

Data Augmentation: Augmenting the dataset with variations in lighting conditions, weather scenarios, and object poses can help the model generalize better to different environmental conditions. By exposing the model to a diverse set of scenarios during training, it can learn to handle a wider range of real-world situations.

Model Evaluation and Iterative Improvement: Regularly evaluating the model's performance on the new object classes and iteratively refining the architecture, loss functions, and training strategies based on the evaluation results can lead to enhanced detection capabilities for a broader set of objects.

What are the potential trade-offs between the accuracy improvements offered by the polygon representation and the increased computational complexity compared to simpler bounding box representations

The polygon representation offers significant accuracy improvements over simpler bounding box representations, especially in scenarios with strong radial distortions in fisheye images. However, there are potential trade-offs to consider when comparing the polygon representation to bounding boxes:

Computational Complexity: The polygon representation involves regressing multiple points to form a complex shape, which can increase the computational complexity of the model compared to predicting simple bounding boxes. This additional complexity may require more computational resources and longer inference times.

Annotation and Training Complexity: Annotating polygon representations for training data can be more challenging and time-consuming than annotating bounding boxes. Training a model to predict polygon representations accurately may require more extensive data preprocessing and annotation efforts.

Generalization and Robustness: While the polygon representation can provide more accurate object boundaries, it may also be more sensitive to noise and variations in the data. Simplified representations like bounding boxes are more robust to minor distortions and variations in object shapes.

Instance Segmentation vs. Object Detection: The polygon representation is more aligned with instance segmentation tasks, where pixel-level object masks are predicted. This level of detail can offer more precise segmentation but at the cost of increased complexity.

In conclusion, while the polygon representation offers superior accuracy and object delineation, it comes with trade-offs in terms of computational complexity, annotation requirements, and generalization capabilities compared to simpler bounding box representations.

Given the diverse geographical and environmental conditions in the dataset, how can the model's robustness be further improved to handle a wider range of real-world scenarios, such as adverse weather conditions or unusual lighting

To enhance the model's robustness to handle a wider range of real-world scenarios, such as adverse weather conditions or unusual lighting, the following strategies can be implemented:

Data Augmentation: Augmenting the training dataset with variations in weather conditions, lighting, and environmental factors can help the model learn to adapt to different scenarios. Techniques like adding noise, adjusting brightness, and simulating adverse weather conditions can improve the model's robustness.

Adversarial Training: Incorporating adversarial training techniques can expose the model to perturbed or distorted inputs during training, making it more resilient to adversarial attacks and variations in the input data.

Domain Adaptation: Fine-tuning the model on data specifically collected in adverse weather conditions or unusual lighting scenarios can help the model generalize better to such conditions. Domain adaptation techniques can bridge the gap between the training and deployment environments.

Ensemble Learning: Utilizing ensemble learning by combining predictions from multiple models trained on different subsets of the data or with different architectures can improve the model's robustness and generalization capabilities across diverse conditions.

Regularization Techniques: Applying regularization methods like dropout, weight decay, or batch normalization can prevent overfitting and improve the model's ability to generalize to unseen data, including challenging environmental conditions.

By incorporating these strategies and continuously evaluating the model's performance on diverse scenarios, the robustness of the FisheyeDetNet model can be further enhanced to handle a wider range of real-world conditions effectively.