Book Image

Applied Deep Learning and Computer Vision for Self-Driving Cars

By : Sumit Ranjan, Dr. S. Senthamilarasu
Book Image

Applied Deep Learning and Computer Vision for Self-Driving Cars

By: Sumit Ranjan, Dr. S. Senthamilarasu

Overview of this book

Thanks to a number of recent breakthroughs, self-driving car technology is now an emerging subject in the field of artificial intelligence and has shifted data scientists' focus to building autonomous cars that will transform the automotive industry. This book is a comprehensive guide to use deep learning and computer vision techniques to develop autonomous cars. Starting with the basics of self-driving cars (SDCs), this book will take you through the deep neural network techniques required to get up and running with building your autonomous vehicle. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you'll delve into advanced computer vision techniques and learn how to use deep learning methods to perform a variety of computer vision tasks such as finding lane lines, improving image classification, and so on. You will explore the basic structure and working of a semantic segmentation model and get to grips with detecting cars using semantic segmentation. The book also covers advanced applications such as behavior-cloning and vehicle detection using OpenCV, transfer learning, and deep learning methodologies to train SDCs to mimic human driving. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to implement a variety of neural networks to develop your own autonomous vehicle using modern Python libraries.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Deep Learning Foundation and SDC Basics
5
Section 2: Deep Learning and Computer Vision Techniques for SDC
10
Section 3: Semantic Segmentation for Self-Driving Cars
13
Section 4: Advanced Implementations

Introduction to convolution

Convolutions are used to scan an image and apply a filter to obtain a certain feature using a kernel matrix. An image kernel is a matrix that is used to apply effects such as blurring and sharpening. Kernels are used in machine learning for feature extraction—that is, selecting the most important pixels of an image. It also preserves the spatial relationship between pixels.

In the following screenshot, we can see that after applying kernels, the example image is transformed into feature maps:

Fig 4.32: Applying kernels 

In Fig 4.33, we can see how the convolution works. We have an example of a grayscale image, the blue box is the kernel, and the green box is the final image. In general, the kernel is applied to the entire image and scans the features of the image. Convolution can be used when generating a new image, scaling down the image, blurring the image, or sharpening the image, depending on the value of the kernel we use...