Xiaofan Zhang

Abstract

Object detection and tracking are challenging tasks for resource-constrained embedded systems. While these tasks are among the most compute-intensive tasks from the artificial intelligence domain, they are only allowed to use limited computation and memory resources on embedded devices. In the meanwhile, such resource-constrained implementations are often required to satisfy additional demanding requirements such as real-time response, high-throughput performance, and reliable inference accuracy. To overcome these challenges, we propose SkyNet, a hardware-efficient neural network to deliver the state-of-the-art detection accuracy and speed for embedded systems. Instead of following the common top-down flow for compact DNN design, SkyNet provides a bottom-up DNN design approach with comprehensive understanding of the hardware constraints at the very beginning to deliver hardware-efficient DNNs. SkyNet is demonstrated by winning the extremely competitive System Design Contest for low power object detection in the 56th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC-SDC), where our SkyNet significantly outperforms all other 100+ competitors. SkyNet is also extended to GOT-10K for generic object tracking. For the state-of-the-art object trackers SiamRPN++ and SiamMask, where ResNet-50 is employed as the backbone, implementations using our SkyNet as the backbone are faster with better or similar accuracy and smaller in terms of parameter size.

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