AutoML-Based Neural Architecture Search for Object Recognition in Satellite Imagery

Advancements in optical satellite hardware and lowered costs for satellite launches raised the high demand for geospatial intelligence. The object recognition problem in multi-spectral satellite imagery carries dataset properties unique to this problem. Perspective distortion, resolution variability, data spectrality, and other features make it difficult for a specific human-invented neural network to perform well on a dispersed type of scenery, ranging data quality, and different objects. UNET, MACU, and other manually designed network architectures deliver high-performance results for accuracy and prediction speed in large objects. However, once trained on different datasets, the performance drops and requires manual recalibration or further configuration testing to adjust the neural network architecture. To solve these issues, AutoML-based techniques can be employed. In this paper, we focus on Neural Architecture Search that is capable of obtaining a well-performing network configuration without human manual intervention. Firstly, we conducted detailed testing on the top four performing neural networks for object recognition in satellite imagery to compare their performance: FastFCN, DeepLabv3, UNET, and MACU. Then we applied and further developed a Neural Architecture Search technique for the best-performing manually designed MACU by optimizing a search space at the artificial neuron cellular level of the network. Several NAS-MACU versions were explored and evaluated. Our developed AutoML process generated a NAS-MACU neural network that produced better performance compared with MACU, especially in a low-information intensity environment. The experimental investigation was performed on our annotated and updated publicly available satellite imagery dataset. We can state that the application of the Neural Architecture Search procedure has the capability to be applied across various datasets and object recognition problems within the remote sensing research field.