Synthetic data for automatic target recognition from small drones

Celso de Melo; Damon Conover; Domenick Poster; Sarah Leung; Robert Nguyen; Joseph Conroy

doi:10.1117/12.2663088

13 June 2023 Synthetic data for automatic target recognition from small drones

Celso de Melo, Damon Conover, Domenick Poster, Sarah Leung, Robert Nguyen, Joseph Conroy

Proceedings Volume 12529, Synthetic Data for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Tools, Techniques, and Applications; 125290O (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2663088
Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, 2023, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Automatic target recognition (ATR) technology is likely to play an increasingly prevalent role in maintaining situational awareness in the modern battlefield. Progress in deep learning has enabled considerable progress in the development of ATR algorithms; however, these algorithms require large amounts of high-quality annotated data to train and that is often the main bottleneck. Synthetic data offers a potential solution to this problem, especially given recent proliferation of tools and techniques to synthesize custom data. Here, we focus on ATR, in the visible domain, from the perspective of a small drone, which represents a domain of growing importance to the Army. We describe custom simulators built to support synthetic data for multiple targets in a variety of environments. We describe a field experiment where we compared a baseline (YOLOv5) model, trained on off-the-shelf large generic public datasets, with a model augmented with specialized synthetic data. We deployed the models on a VOXL platform in a small drone. Our results showed a considerable boost in performance when using synthetic data of over 40% in target detection accuracy (average precision with at least 50% overlap). We discuss the value of synthetic data for this domain, the opportunities it creates, but also the novel challenges it introduces.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Celso de Melo, Damon Conover, Domenick Poster, Sarah Leung, Robert Nguyen, and Joseph Conroy "Synthetic data for automatic target recognition from small drones", Proc. SPIE 12529, Synthetic Data for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Tools, Techniques, and Applications, 125290O (13 June 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2663088

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