Source-free cross domain detection method with strong data augmentation and self-trained mean teacher modeling

Abstract

A method for implementing source-free domain adaptive detection is presented. The method includes, in a pretraining phase, applying strong data augmentation to labeled source images to produce perturbed labeled source images and training an object detection model by using the perturbed labeled source images to generate a source-only model. The method further includes, in an adaptation phase, training a self-trained mean teacher model by generating a weakly augmented image and multiple strongly augmented images from unlabeled target images, generating a plurality of region proposals from the weakly augmented image, selecting a region proposal from the plurality of region proposals as a pseudo ground truth, detecting, by the self-trained mean teacher model, object boxes and selecting pseudo ground truth boxes by employing a confidence constraint and a consistency constraint, and training a student model by using one of the multiple strongly augmented images jointly with an object detection loss.