Lightweight Convolutional Neural Networks with Model-Switching Architecture for Multi-Scenario Road Semantic Segmentation

• Main Authors: Peng-Wei Lin, Chih-Ming Hsu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: multi-model; lightweight; road segmentation; convolutional neural network
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/16/7424

A convolutional neural network (CNN) that was trained using datasets for multiple scenarios was proposed to facilitate real-time road semantic segmentation for various scenarios encountered in autonomous driving. However, the CNN inhibited the mutual suppression effect between weights; thus, it did not perform as well as a network that was trained using a single scenario. To address this limitation, we used a model-switching architecture in the network and maintained the optimal weights of each individual model which required considerable space and computation. We, subsequently, incorporated a lightweight process into the model to reduce the model size and computational load. The experimental results indicated that the proposed lightweight CNN with a model-switching architecture outperformed and was faster than the conventional methods across multiple scenarios in road semantic segmentation.