Efficient Real-Time Image Recognition Using Collaborative Swarm of UAVs and Convolutional Networks

Marwan Dhuheir*, Emna Baccour*, Aiman Erbad*, Sinan Sabeeh, Mounir Hamdi*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have recently attracted significant attention due to their outstanding ability to be used in different sectors and serve in difficult and dangerous areas. Moreover, the advancements in computer vision and artificial intelligence have increased the use of UAVs in various applications and solutions, such as forest fires detection and borders monitoring. However, using deep neural networks (DNNs) with UAVs introduces several challenges of processing deeper networks and complex models, which restricts their on-board computation. In this work, we present a strategy aiming at distributing inference requests to a swarm of resource-constrained UAVs that classifies captured images on-board and finds the minimum decision-making latency. We formulate the model as an optimization problem that minimizes the latency between acquiring images and making the final decisions. The formulated optimization solution is an NP-hard problem. Hence it is not adequate for online resource allocation. Therefore, we introduce an online heuristic solution, namely DistInference, to find the layers placement strategy that gives the best latency among the available UAVs. The proposed approach is general enough to be used for different low decision-latency applications as well as for all CNN types organized into pipeline of layers (e.g., VGG) or based on residual blocks (e.g., ResNet).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2021 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, IWCMC 2021
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1954-1959
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728186160
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event17th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, IWCMC 2021 - Virtual, Online, China
Duration: 28 Jun 20212 Jul 2021

Publication series

Name2021 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, IWCMC 2021

Conference

Conference17th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, IWCMC 2021
Country/TerritoryChina
CityVirtual, Online
Period28/06/212/07/21

Keywords

  • Classification
  • Deep CNN
  • Inference requests
  • Latency
  • Optimization
  • ResNet
  • UAV

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