Traffic Scene Segmentation Based on RGB-D Image and Deep Learning

Semantic segmentation of traffic scenes has potential applications in intelligent transportation systems. Deep learning techniques can improve segmentation accuracy, especially when the information from depth maps is introduced. However, little research has been done on the application of depth maps to the segmentation of traffic scene. In this paper, we propose a method for semantic segmentation of traffic scenes based on RGB-D images and deep learning. The semi-global stereo matching algorithm and the fast global image smoothing method are employed to obtain a smooth disparity map. We present a new deep fully convolutional neural network architecture for semantic pixel-wise segmentation. We test the performance of the proposed network architecture using RGB-D images as input and compare the results with the method that only takes RGB images as input. The experimental results show that the introduction of the disparity map can help to improve the semantic segmentation accuracy and that our proposed network architecture achieves good real-time performance and competitive segmentation accuracy.