The efficient recognition and classification of personal protective equipment are essential for ensuring the safety of personnel in complex industrial settings. Using the existing methods, manually performing macro-level classification and identification of personnel in intricate spheres is tedious, time-consuming, and inefficient. The availability of several artificial intelligence models in recent times presents a new paradigm shift in object classification and tracking in complex settings. In this study, several compact and efficient deep learning model architectures are explored, and a new efficient model is constructed by fusing the learning capabilities of the individual, efficient models for better object feature learning and optimal inferencing. The proposed model ensures rapid identification of personnel in complex working environments for appropriate safety measures. The new model construct follows the contributory learning theory whereby each fussed model brings its learned features that are then combined to obtain a more accurate and rapid model using normalized quantization-aware learning. The major contribution of the work is the introduction of a normalized quantization-aware learning strategy to fuse the features learned by each of the contributing models. During the investigation, a separable convolutional driven model was constructed as a base model, and then the various efficient architectures were combined for the rapid identification and classification of the various hardhat classes used in complex industrial settings. A remarkable rapid classification and accuracy were recorded with the new resultant model.
Keywords: complex industrial scene; deep learning ensemble; normalized quantization-aware learning; onsite personnel identification; rapid object classification.