Speeding up Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving

Deep learning has considerably improved semantic image segmentation. However, its high accuracy is traded against larger computational costs which makes it unsuitable for embedded devices in self-driving cars. We propose a novel deep network architecture for image segmentation that keeps the high accuracy while being efficient enough for embedded devices. The architecture consists of ELU activation functions, a SqueezeNet-like encoder, followed by parallel dilated convolutions, and a decoder with SharpMask-like refinement modules. On the Cityscapes dataset, the new network achieves higher segmenation accuracy than other networks that are tailored to embedded devices. Simultaneously the frame-rate is still sufficiently high for the deployment in autonomous vehicles.