Learning to Project for Cross-Task Knowledge Distillation

Traditional knowledge distillation (KD) relies on a proficient teacher trained on the target task, which is not always available. In this setting, cross-task distillation can be used, enabling the use of any teacher model trained on a different task. However, many KD methods prove ineffective when applied to this cross-task setting. To address this limitation, we propose a simple modification: the use of an inverted projection. We show that this drop-in replacement for a standard projector is effective by learning to disregard any task-specific features which might degrade the student's performance. We find that this simple modification is sufficient for extending many KD methods to the cross-task setting, where the teacher and student tasks can be very different. In doing so, we obtain up to a 1.9% improvement in the cross-task setting compared to the traditional projection, at no additional cost. Our method can obtain significant performance improvements (up to 7%) when using even a randomly-initialised teacher on various tasks such as depth estimation, image translation, and semantic segmentation, despite the lack of any learned knowledge to transfer. To provide conceptual and analytical insights into this result, we show that using an inverted projection allows the distillation loss to be decomposed into a knowledge transfer and a spectral regularisation component. Through this analysis we are additionally able to propose a novel regularisation loss that allows teacher-free distillation, enabling performance improvements of up to 8.57% on ImageNet with no additional training costs.

DDOS: The Drone Depth and Obstacle Segmentation Dataset

Accurate depth and semantic segmentation are crucial for various computer vision tasks. However, the scarcity of annotated real-world aerial datasets poses a significant challenge for training and evaluating robust models. Additionally, the detection and segmentation of thin objects, such as wires, cables, and fences, present a critical concern for ensuring the safe operation of drones. To address these limitations, we present a novel synthetic dataset specifically designed for depth and semantic segmentation tasks in aerial views. Leveraging photo-realistic rendering techniques, our dataset provides a valuable resource for training models using a synthetic-supervision training scheme while introducing new drone-specific metrics for depth accuracy.

Multi-Class Segmentation from Aerial Views using Recursive Noise Diffusion

Semantic segmentation from aerial views is a vital task for autonomous drones as they require precise and accurate segmentation to traverse safely and efficiently. Segmenting images from aerial views is especially challenging as they include diverse view-points, extreme scale variation and high scene complexity. To address this problem, we propose an end-to-end multi-class semantic segmentation diffusion model. We introduce recursive denoising which allows predicted error to propagate through the denoising process. In addition, we combine this with a hierarchical multi-scale approach, complementary to the diffusion process. Our method achieves state-of-the-art results on UAVid and on the Vaihingen building segmentation benchmark.