Multi-class object classification using deep learning models in automotive object detection scenarios

Soumya A., Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi, Vishnu Chalavadi, C. Krishna Mohan

Abstract: This paper presents two deep learning models using a multi-perspective convolutional neural network (CNN) for classifying objects in the context of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The proposed model categorizes objects accurately, enabling them to make well-informed decisions in multi-object (such as Persons, Trucks, Motorbikes, Cars, and Cyclists.) detection in complex scenarios for automotive applications. The custom backbone model is designed based on experimentation with the VGG backbone network based on the VGG backbone network, incorporating a multilayer prediction head and custom feature extraction blocks for classifying multiple objects in complex scenes. The model is to extract abstract features and features at multiple scales with a custom-designed feature extraction backbone with multiple blocks. The proposed models are lightweight and require fewer computational resources for high classification performance. The automotive publicly available dataset with 19800 images and labels has been used. Results show that when we experimented with the VGG backbone CNN model, the classification accuracy of 99.64% is achieved, and on the other hand, the classification accuracy of custom backbone CNN is 99.46%. The performance of the proposed custom model is also compared to those of pre-trained benchmark models. The experimental findings presented in this paper show that the proposed models achieve higher accuracy than the pre-trained models.