A Weakly Supervised Semi-Automatic Image Labeling Approach for Deformable Linear Objects

Caporali A, Pantano M, Janisch L, Regulin D, Palli G, Lee D (2023)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Journal

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters IEEE

Book Volume: 8

Pages Range: 1013-1020

Journal Issue: 2

DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2023.3234799

Abstract

The presence of Deformable Linear Objects (DLOs) such as wires, cables or ropes in our everyday life is massive. However, the applicability of robotic solutions to DLOs is still marginal due to the many challenges involved in their perception. In this letter, a methodology to generate datasets from a mixture of synthetic and real samples for the training of DLOs segmentation approaches is thus presented. The method is composed of two steps. First, key-points along a real-world DLO are labeled by employing a VR tracker operated by a user. Second, synthetic and real-world datasets are mixed for the training of semantic and instance segmentation deep learning algorithms to study the benefit of real-world data in DLOs segmentation. To validate this method a user study and a parameter study are conducted. The results show that the VR tracker labeling is usable as other labeling techniques but reduces the number of clicks. Moreover, mixing real-world and synthetic DLOs data can improve the IoU score of a semantic segmentation algorithm by circa 5%. Therefore, this work demonstrates that labeling real-world data via a VR tracker can be done quickly and, if the real-world data are mixed with synthetic data, the performances of segmentation algorithms for DLOs can be improved.

Involved external institutions

University of Bologna / Università di Bologna IT Italy (IT) Technische Universität Wien / Vienna University of Technology AT Austria (AT)

How to cite

APA:

Caporali, A., Pantano, M., Janisch, L., Regulin, D., Palli, G., & Lee, D. (2023). A Weakly Supervised Semi-Automatic Image Labeling Approach for Deformable Linear Objects. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 8(2), 1013-1020. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2023.3234799

MLA:

Caporali, Alessio, et al. "A Weakly Supervised Semi-Automatic Image Labeling Approach for Deformable Linear Objects." IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 8.2 (2023): 1013-1020.

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