Road Surface Damage Detection Using Fully Convolutional Neural Networks and Semi-Supervised Learning

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Dec 12;19(24):5501. doi: 10.3390/s19245501.

Abstract

The various defects that occur on asphalt pavement are a direct cause car accidents, and countermeasures are required because they cause significantly dangerous situations. In this paper, we propose fully convolutional neural networks (CNN)-based road surface damage detection with semi-supervised learning. First, the training DB is collected through the camera installed in the vehicle while driving on the road. Moreover, the CNN model is trained in the form of a semantic segmentation using the deep convolutional autoencoder. Here, we augmented the training dataset depending on brightness, and finally generated a total of 40,536 training images. Furthermore, the CNN model is updated by using the pseudo-labeled images from the semi-supervised learning methods for improving the performance of road surface damage detection technique. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, 450 evaluation datasets were created to verify the performance of the proposed road surface damage detection, and four experts evaluated each image. As a result, it is confirmed that the proposed method can properly segment the road surface damages.

Keywords: autoencoder; convolutional neural network; road surface damage; semantic segmentation; semi-supervised learning.