Object Detection - Quick Start

Object detection is the process of identifying and localizing objects in an image and is an important task in computer vision. Follow this tutorial to learn how to use AutoGluon for object detection.

Tip: If you are new to AutoGluon, review Image Prediction - Quick Start first to learn the basics of the AutoGluon API.

Our goal is to detect motorbike in images by YOLOv3 model. A tiny dataset is collected from VOC dataset, which only contains the motorbike category. The model pretrained on the COCO dataset is used to fine-tune our small dataset. With the help of AutoGluon, we are able to try many models with different hyperparameters automatically, and return the best one as our final model.

To start, import ObjectDetector:

from autogluon.vision import ObjectDetector
/var/lib/jenkins/miniconda3/envs/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/lib/python3.9/site-packages/gluoncv/__init__.py:40: UserWarning: Both mxnet==1.7.0 and torch==1.10.2+cu102 are installed. You might encounter increased GPU memory footprint if both framework are used at the same time.
  warnings.warn(f'Both mxnet=={mx.__version__} and torch=={torch.__version__} are installed. '

Tiny_motorbike Dataset

We collect a toy dataset for detecting motorbikes in images. From the VOC dataset, images are randomly selected for training, validation, and testing - 120 images for training, 50 images for validation, and 50 for testing. This tiny dataset follows the same format as VOC.

Using the commands below, we can download this dataset, which is only 23M. The name of unzipped folder is called tiny_motorbike. Anyway, the task dataset helper can perform the download and extraction automatically, and load the dataset according to the detection formats.

url = 'https://autogluon.s3.amazonaws.com/datasets/tiny_motorbike.zip'
dataset_train = ObjectDetector.Dataset.from_voc(url, splits='trainval')
tiny_motorbike/
├── Annotations/
├── ImageSets/
└── JPEGImages/

Fit Models by AutoGluon

In this section, we demonstrate how to apply AutoGluon to fit our detection models. We use mobilenet as the backbone for the YOLOv3 model. Two different learning rates are used to fine-tune the network. The best model is the one that obtains the best performance on the validation dataset. You can also try using more networks and hyperparameters to create a larger searching space.

We fit a classifier using AutoGluon as follows. In each experiment (one trial in our searching space), we train the model for 5 epochs to avoid bursting our tutorial runtime.

time_limit = 60*30  # at most 0.5 hour
detector = ObjectDetector()
hyperparameters = {'epochs': 5, 'batch_size': 8}
hyperparameter_tune_kwargs={'num_trials': 2}
detector.fit(dataset_train, time_limit=time_limit, hyperparameters=hyperparameters, hyperparameter_tune_kwargs=hyperparameter_tune_kwargs)
=============================================================================
WARNING: ObjectDetector is deprecated as of v0.4.0 and may contain various bugs and issues!
In a future release ObjectDetector may be entirely reworked to use Torch as a backend.
This future change will likely be API breaking.Users should ensure they update their code that depends on ObjectDetector when upgrading to future AutoGluon releases.
For more information, refer to ObjectDetector refactor GitHub issue: https://github.com/awslabs/autogluon/issues/1559
=============================================================================

The number of requested GPUs is greater than the number of available GPUs.Reduce the number to 1
Randomly split train_data into train[152]/validation[18] splits.
Starting HPO experiments
  0%|          | 0/2 [00:00<?, ?it/s]
modified configs(<old> != <new>): {
root.dataset_root    ~/.mxnet/datasets/ != auto
root.train.early_stop_max_value 1.0 != inf
root.train.early_stop_baseline 0.0 != -inf
root.train.epochs    20 != 5
root.train.seed      233 != 354
root.train.batch_size 16 != 8
root.train.early_stop_patience -1 != 10
root.num_workers     4 != 8
root.gpus            (0, 1, 2, 3) != (0,)
root.valid.batch_size 16 != 8
root.ssd.base_network vgg16_atrous != resnet50_v1
root.ssd.data_shape  300 != 512
root.dataset         voc_tiny != auto
}
Saved config to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/config.yaml
Using transfer learning from ssd_512_resnet50_v1_coco, the other network parameters are ignored.
Start training from [Epoch 0]
[Epoch 0] Training cost: 9.739492, CrossEntropy=3.526174, SmoothL1=1.000556
[Epoch 0] Validation:
motorbike=0.6480460980460979
dog=0.0
bicycle=0.07272727272727274
cow=nan
bus=nan
pottedplant=0.0
boat=nan
person=0.5364828678162498
chair=nan
car=0.6363636363636365
mAP=0.31560331249220946
[Epoch 0] Current best map: 0.315603 vs previous 0.000000, saved to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/best_checkpoint.pkl
[Epoch 1] Training cost: 7.960934, CrossEntropy=2.649148, SmoothL1=1.264558
[Epoch 1] Validation:
motorbike=0.7181168831168832
dog=0.0
bicycle=0.10606060606060605
cow=nan
bus=nan
pottedplant=0.0
boat=nan
person=0.7205387205387206
chair=nan
car=0.4242424242424242
mAP=0.32815977232643906
[Epoch 1] Current best map: 0.328160 vs previous 0.315603, saved to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/best_checkpoint.pkl
[Epoch 2] Training cost: 8.498090, CrossEntropy=2.618884, SmoothL1=1.374472
[Epoch 2] Validation:
motorbike=0.7379935720844811
dog=0.0
bicycle=0.36363636363636365
cow=nan
bus=nan
pottedplant=0.0
boat=nan
person=0.7536128526645769
chair=nan
car=0.7202797202797202
mAP=0.4292537514441903
[Epoch 2] Current best map: 0.429254 vs previous 0.328160, saved to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/best_checkpoint.pkl
[Epoch 3] Training cost: 8.231382, CrossEntropy=2.534156, SmoothL1=1.235584
[Epoch 3] Validation:
motorbike=0.7416912110877629
dog=0.0
bicycle=0.4727272727272728
cow=nan
bus=nan
pottedplant=0.0
boat=nan
person=0.7657023499932814
chair=nan
car=0.6363636363636365
mAP=0.43608074502865896
[Epoch 3] Current best map: 0.436081 vs previous 0.429254, saved to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/best_checkpoint.pkl
[Epoch 4] Training cost: 8.520520, CrossEntropy=2.207729, SmoothL1=1.038262
[Epoch 4] Validation:
motorbike=0.7984848484848486
dog=0.0
bicycle=0.36363636363636365
cow=nan
bus=nan
pottedplant=0.0
boat=nan
person=0.8206487292611696
chair=nan
car=0.6363636363636365
mAP=0.43652226295766966
[Epoch 4] Current best map: 0.436522 vs previous 0.436081, saved to /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/workspace/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/docs/_build/eval/tutorials/object_detection/b4ab3cd3/.trial_0/best_checkpoint.pkl
Applying the state from the best checkpoint...
Finished, total runtime is 71.84 s
{ 'best_config': { 'dataset': 'auto',
                   'dataset_root': 'auto',
                   'estimator': <class 'gluoncv.auto.estimators.ssd.ssd.SSDEstimator'>,
                   'gpus': [0],
                   'horovod': False,
                   'num_workers': 8,
                   'resume': '',
                   'save_interval': 1,
                   'ssd': { 'amp': False,
                            'base_network': 'resnet50_v1',
                            'data_shape': 512,
                            'filters': None,
                            'nms_thresh': 0.45,
                            'nms_topk': 400,
                            'ratios': ( [1, 2, 0.5],
                                        [1, 2, 0.5, 3, 0.3333333333333333],
                                        [1, 2, 0.5, 3, 0.3333333333333333],
                                        [1, 2, 0.5, 3, 0.3333333333333333],
                                        [1, 2, 0.5],
                                        [1, 2, 0.5]),
                            'sizes': (30, 60, 111, 162, 213, 264, 315),
                            'steps': (8, 16, 32, 64, 100, 300),
                            'syncbn': False,
                            'transfer': 'ssd_512_resnet50_v1_coco'},
                   'train': { 'batch_size': 8,
                              'dali': False,
                              'early_stop_baseline': -inf,
                              'early_stop_max_value': inf,
                              'early_stop_min_delta': 0.001,
                              'early_stop_patience': 10,
                              'epochs': 5,
                              'log_interval': 100,
                              'lr': 0.001,
                              'lr_decay': 0.1,
                              'lr_decay_epoch': (160, 200),
                              'momentum': 0.9,
                              'seed': 354,
                              'start_epoch': 0,
                              'wd': 0.0005},
                   'valid': { 'batch_size': 8,
                              'iou_thresh': 0.5,
                              'metric': 'voc07',
                              'val_interval': 1}},
  'total_time': 71.84064221382141,
  'train_map': 0.7027151859705439,
  'valid_map': 0.43652226295766966}
<autogluon.vision.detector.detector.ObjectDetector at 0x7f815623e460>

Note that num_trials=2 above is only used to speed up the tutorial. In normal practice, it is common to only use time_limit and drop num_trials. Also note that hyperparameter tuning defaults to random search.

After fitting, AutoGluon automatically returns the best model among all models in the searching space. From the output, we know the best model is the one trained with the second learning rate. To see how well the returned model performed on test dataset, call detector.evaluate().

dataset_test = ObjectDetector.Dataset.from_voc(url, splits='test')

test_map = detector.evaluate(dataset_test)
print("mAP on test dataset: {}".format(test_map[1][-1]))
tiny_motorbike/
├── Annotations/
├── ImageSets/
└── JPEGImages/
mAP on test dataset: 0.2955375636355408

Below, we randomly select an image from test dataset and show the predicted class, box and probability over the origin image, stored in predict_class, predict_rois and predict_score columns, respectively. You can interpret predict_rois as a dict of (xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax) proportional to original image size.

image_path = dataset_test.iloc[0]['image']
result = detector.predict(image_path)
print(result)
   predict_class  predict_score  0         person       0.968006
1      motorbike       0.958618
2      motorbike       0.172943
3            car       0.155108
4      motorbike       0.122104
..           ...            ...
95        person       0.030052
96        person       0.030051
97        person       0.029965
98        person       0.029713
99        person       0.029689

                                         predict_rois
0   {'xmin': 0.4036383628845215, 'ymin': 0.2828292...
1   {'xmin': 0.3045811057090759, 'ymin': 0.4250262...
2   {'xmin': 0.006702372804284096, 'ymin': 0.67529...
3   {'xmin': 0.00579970283433795, 'ymin': 0.658171...
4   {'xmin': 0.3792843520641327, 'ymin': 0.3439804...
..                                                ...
95  {'xmin': 0.8851612210273743, 'ymin': 0.7229430...
96  {'xmin': 1.0, 'ymin': 0.5008818507194519, 'xma...
97  {'xmin': 0.9956833720207214, 'ymin': 0.8594512...
98  {'xmin': 0.20750705897808075, 'ymin': 0.689306...
99  {'xmin': 0.9666803479194641, 'ymin': 0.6918264...

[100 rows x 3 columns]

Prediction with multiple images is permitted:

bulk_result = detector.predict(dataset_test)
print(bulk_result)
     predict_class  predict_score  0           person       0.968006
1        motorbike       0.958618
2        motorbike       0.172943
3              car       0.155108
4        motorbike       0.122104
...            ...            ...
4611        person       0.020639
4612        person       0.020607
4613     motorbike       0.020576
4614        person       0.020542
4615        person       0.020524

                                           predict_rois  0     {'xmin': 0.4036383628845215, 'ymin': 0.2828292...
1     {'xmin': 0.3045811057090759, 'ymin': 0.4250262...
2     {'xmin': 0.006702372804284096, 'ymin': 0.67529...
3     {'xmin': 0.00579970283433795, 'ymin': 0.658171...
4     {'xmin': 0.3792843520641327, 'ymin': 0.3439804...
...                                                 ...
4611  {'xmin': 0.3389773368835449, 'ymin': 0.0953838...
4612  {'xmin': 0.497570663690567, 'ymin': 0.13796894...
4613  {'xmin': 0.0, 'ymin': 0.3180899918079376, 'xma...
4614  {'xmin': 0.0074115656316280365, 'ymin': 0.3797...
4615  {'xmin': 0.22133126854896545, 'ymin': 0.388737...

                                                  image
0     /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
1     /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
2     /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
3     /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
4     /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
...                                                 ...
4611  /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
4612  /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
4613  /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
4614  /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...
4615  /var/lib/jenkins/.gluoncv/datasets/tiny_motorb...

[4616 rows x 4 columns]

We can also save the trained model, and use it later.

savefile = 'detector.ag'
detector.save(savefile)
new_detector = ObjectDetector.load(savefile)
/var/lib/jenkins/miniconda3/envs/autogluon-tutorial-object-detection-v3/lib/python3.9/site-packages/mxnet/gluon/block.py:1512: UserWarning: Cannot decide type for the following arguments. Consider providing them as input:
    data: None
  input_sym_arg_type = in_param.infer_type()[0]