Dynamic Scale Inference by Entropy Minimization

Dequan Wang, Evan Shelhamer, Bruno Olshausen, Trevor Darrell

Keywords: unsupervised learning, dynamic inference, equivariance, entropy

TL;DR: Unsupervised optimization during inference gives top-down feedback to iteratively adjust feedforward prediction of scale variation for more equivariant recognition.

Abstract: Given the variety of the visual world there is not one true scale for recognition: objects may appear at drastically different sizes across the visual field. Rather than enumerate variations across filter channels or pyramid levels, dynamic models locally predict scale and adapt receptive fields accordingly. The degree of variation and diversity of inputs makes this a difficult task. Existing methods either learn a feedforward predictor, which is not itself totally immune to the scale variation it is meant to counter, or select scales by a fixed algorithm, which cannot learn from the given task and data. We extend dynamic scale inference from feedforward prediction to iterative optimization for further adaptivity. We propose a novel entropy minimization objective for inference and optimize over task and structure parameters to tune the model to each input. Optimization during inference improves semantic segmentation accuracy and generalizes better to extreme scale variations that cause feedforward dynamic inference to falter.