TAO v5.5.0
NVIDIA TAO v5.5.0

DetectNet_v2

DetectNet_v2 is an NVIDIA-developed object-detection model that is included in the TAO. DetectNet_v2 supports the following tasks:

  • dataset_convert

  • train

  • evaluate

  • inference

  • prune

  • calibration_tensorfile

  • export

These tasks can be invoked from the TAO Launcher using the following convention on the command-line:

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tao model detectnet_v2 <sub_task> <args_per_subtask>

where, args_per_subtask are the command-line arguments required for a given subtask. Each subtask is explained in detail in the following sections.

NVIDIA recommends following the workflow in the diagram below to generate a trained and optimized DetectNet_v2 model.

tao_workflow_detectnet_v2.png

The object detection apps in TAO expect data in KITTI format for training and evaluation.

See the Data Annotation Format page for more information about the KITTI data format.

The DetectNet_v2 app requires the raw input data to be converted to TFRecords for optimized iteration across the data batches. This can be done using the dataset_convert subtask under DetectNet_v2. Currently, the KITTI and COCO formats are supported.

The dataset_convert tool requires a configuration file as input. Details of the configuration file and examples are included in the following sections.

Configuration File for Dataset Converter

The dataset_convert tool provides several configurable parameters. The parameters are encapsulated in a spec file to convert data from the original annotation format to the TFRecords format which the trainer can ingest. KITTI and COCO formats can be configured by using either kitti_config or coco_config respectively. You may use only one of the two in a single spec file. The spec file is a prototxt format file with following global parameters:

  • kitti_config: A nested prototxt configuration with multiple input parameters

  • coco_config: A nested prototxt configuration with multiple input parameters

  • image_directory_path: The path to the dataset root. The image_dir_name is appended to this path to get the input images and must be the same path specified in the experiment spec file.

  • target_class_mapping: The prototxt dictionary that maps the class names in the tfrecords to the target class to be trained in the network.

kitti_config

Here are descriptions of the configurable parameters for the kitti_config field:

Parameter

Datatype

Default

Description

Supported Values

root_directory_path string The path to the dataset root directory
image_dir_name string The relative path to the directory containing images from the path in root_directory_path.
label_dir_name string The relative path to the directory containing labels from the path in root_directory_path.
partition_mode string The method employed when partitioning the data to multiple folds. Two methods are supported:
  • Random partitioning: The data is divided in to 2 folds, train and val. This mode requires that the val_split parameter be set.
  • Sequence-wise partitioning: The data is divided into n partitions (defined by the num_partitions parameter) based on the number of sequences available.
  • random
  • sequence
num_partitions int 2 (if partition_mode is random) The number of partitions to use to split the data (N folds). This field is ignored when the partition model is set to random, as by default only two partitions are generated: val and train. In sequence mode, the data is split into n-folds. The number of partitions is ideally fewer than the total number of sequences in the kitti_sequence_to_frames file. n=2 for random partition n< number of sequences in the kitti_sequence_to_frames_file
image_extension str .png The extension of the images in the image_dir_name parameter. .png .jpg .jpeg
val_split float 20 The percentage of data to be separated for validation. This only works under “random” partition mode. This partition is available in fold 0 of the TFrecords generated. Set the validation fold to 0 in the dataset_config. 0-100
kitti_sequence_to_frames_file str The name of the KITTI sequence to frame mapping file. This file must be present within the dataset root as mentioned in the root_directory_path.
num_shards int 10 The number of shards per fold. 1-20

The sample configuration file shown below converts the 100% KITTI dataset to the training set.

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kitti_config { root_directory_path: "/workspace/tao-experiments/data/" image_dir_name: "training/image_2" label_dir_name: "training/label_2" image_extension: ".png" partition_mode: "random" num_partitions: 2 val_split: 0 num_shards: 10 } image_directory_path: "/workspace/tao-experiments/data/" target_class_mapping { key: "car" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "pedestrian" value: "pedestrian" } target_class_mapping { key: "cyclist" value: "cyclist" } target_class_mapping { key: "van" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "person_sitting" value: "pedestrian" } target_class_mapping { key: "truck" value: "car" }

coco_config

Here are descriptions of the configurable parameters for the coco_config field:

Parameter

Datatype

Default

Description

Supported Values

root_directory_path string The path to the dataset root directory
image_dir_names string (repated) The relative path to the directory containing images from the path in root_directory_path for each partition.
annotation_files string (repated) The relative path to the directory containing JSON file from the path in root_directory_path for each partition.
num_partitions int 2 The number of partitions in the data. The number of partition must match the length of the list for image_dir_names and annotation_files. By default, two partitions are generated: val and train. n==len(annotation_files)
num_shards int (repeated) [10] The number of shards per partitions. If only one value is provided, same number of shards is applied in all partitions

The sample configuration file shown below converts the COCO dataset with training and validation data where number of shard is 32 for validation and 256 for training.

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coco_config { root_directory_path: "/workspace/tao-experiments/data/coco" image_dir_names: ["val2017", "train2017"] annotation_files: ["annotations/instances_val2017.json", "annotations/instances_train2017.json"] num_partitions: 2 num_shards: [32, 256] } image_directory_path: "/workspace/tao-experiments/data/coco"

Sample Usage of the Dataset Converter Tool

While KITTI is the accepted dataset format for object detection, the DetectNet_v2 trainer requires this data to be converted to TFRecord files for ingestion. The dataset_convert tool is described below:

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tao model detectnet_v2 dataset_convert [-h] -d DATASET_EXPORT_SPEC -o OUTPUT_FILENAME [-f VALIDATION_FOLD]

You can use the following optional arguments:

  • -h, --help: Show this help message and exit

  • -d, --dataset-export-spec: The path to the detection dataset spec containing the config for exporting .tfrecord files

  • -o output_filename: The output filename

  • -f, –validation-fold: The validation fold in 0-based indexing. This is required when modifying the training set, but otherwise optional.

The following example shows how to use the command with the dataset:

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tao model detectnet_v2 dataset_convert [-h] -d <path_to_tfrecords_conversion_spec> -o <path_to_output_tfrecords>

The following is the output log from executing tao model detectnet_v2 dataset_convert:

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Using TensorFlow backend. 2019-07-16 01:30:59,073 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.build_converter - INFO - Instantiating a kitti converter 2019-07-16 01:30:59,243 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.kitti_converter_lib - INFO - Num images in Train: 10786 Val: 2696 2019-07-16 01:30:59,243 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.kitti_converter_lib - INFO - Validation data in partition 0. Hence, while choosing the validation set during training choose validation_fold 0. 2019-07-16 01:30:59,251 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Writing partition 0, shard 0 /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/iva/detectnet_v2/dataio/kitti_converter_lib.py:265: VisibleDeprecationWarning: Reading unicode strings without specifying the encoding argument is deprecated. Set the encoding, use None for the system default. 2019-07-16 01:31:01,226 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Writing partition 0, shard 1 . . sheep: 242 bottle: 205 .. boat: 171 car: 418 2019-07-16 01:31:20,772 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Writing partition 1, shard 0 .. 2019-07-16 01:32:40,338 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Writing partition 1, shard 9 2019-07-16 01:32:49,063 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Wrote the following numbers of objects: sheep: 695 .. car: 1770 2019-07-16 01:32:49,064 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Cumulative object statistics 2019-07-16 01:32:49,064 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Wrote the following numbers of objects: sheep: 937 .. car: 2188 2019-07-16 01:32:49,064 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Class map. Label in GT: Label in tfrecords file sheep: sheep .. boat: boat For the dataset_config in the experiment_spec, please use labels in the tfrecords file, while writing the classmap. 2019-07-16 01:32:49,064 - iva.detectnet_v2.dataio.dataset_converter_lib - INFO - Tfrecords generation complete.

Note

The dataset_convert tool converts the class names in the KITTI-formatted data files to lowercase characters. Therefore, when configuring a training experiment, ensure that lowercase class names are used in the dataset_config section under target class mapping. Using incorrect class names in the dataset_config section can cause invalid training experiments with 0 mAP.

Note

When using the dataset_convert tool to create separate TFRecords for evaluation, which may be defined under dataset_config using the parameter validation_data_source, we recommend setting the partition_mode to random with 2 partitions and an arbitrary val_split (1-100). The dataloader takes care of traversing through all the folds and generating the mAP accordingly.

To perform training, evaluation, and inference for DetectNet_v2, you need to configure several components, each with their own parameters. The train and evaluate tasks for a DetectNet_v2 experiment share the same configuration file. The inference task uses a separate configuration file.

The specification file for DetectNet_v2 training configures these components of the training pipe:

  • Model

  • BBox ground truth generation

  • Post processing module

  • Cost function configuration

  • Trainer

  • Augmentation model

  • Evaluator

  • Dataloader

Model Config

The core object-detection model can be configured using the model_config option in the spec file.

The following is a sample model config to instantiate a ResNet-18 model with pretrained weights and freeze blocks 0 and 1 with all shortcuts set to projection layers.

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# Sample model config for to instantiate a resnet18 model with pretrained weights and freeze blocks 0, 1 # with all shortcuts having projection layers. model_config { arch: "resnet" pretrained_model_file: <path_to_model_file> freeze_blocks: 0 freeze_blocks: 1 all_projections: True num_layers: 18 use_pooling: False use_batch_norm: True dropout_rate: 0.0 objective_set: { cov {} bbox { scale: 35.0 offset: 0.5 } } }

The following table describes the model_config parameters:

Parameter

Datatype

Default

Description

Supported Values

all_projections bool False For templates with shortcut connections, this parameter defines whether or not all shortcuts should be instantiated with 1x1 projection layers, irrespective of whether there is a change in stride across the input and output. True or False (only to be used in ResNet templates)
arch string resnet The architecture of the backbone feature extractor to be used for training.
  • resnet
  • vgg
  • mobilenet_v1
  • mobilenet_v2
  • googlenet
num_layers int 18 The depth of the feature extractor for scalable templates.
  • resnet: 10, 18, 34, 50, 101
  • vgg: 16, 19
pretrained model file string This parameter defines the path to a pretrained TAO model file. If the load_graph flag is set to false, it is assumed that only the weights of the pretrained model file is to be used. In this case, TAO train constructs the feature extractor graph in the experiment and loads the weights from the pretrained model file that has matching layer names. Thus, transfer learning across different resolutions and domains are supported. For layers that may be absent in the pretrained model, the tool initializes them with random weights and skips the import for that layer. Unix path
use_pooling Boolean False Choose between using strided convolutions or MaxPooling while downsampling. When True, MaxPooling is used to downsample; however, for the object-detection network, NVIDIA recommends setting this to False and using strided convolutions. True or False
use_batch_norm Boolean False A flag to determine whether to use Batch Normalization layers or not. True or False
objective_set Proto Dictionary The objectives for training the network. For object-detection networks, set it to learn cov and bbox. These parameters should not be altered for the current training pipeline. cov {} bbox { scale: 35.0 offset: 0.5 }
dropout_rate Float 0.0 Probability for drop out, 0.0-0.1
load_graph Boolean False A flag to determine whether or not to load the graph from the pretrained model file, or just the weights. For a pruned model, set this parameter to True. Pruning modifies the original graph, so the pruned model graph and the weights need to be imported. True or False
freeze_blocks float (repeated) This parameter defines which blocks may be frozen from the instantiated feature extractor template, and is different for different feature extractor templates.
  • ResNet series: For the ResNet series, the block ID’s valid for freezing is any subset of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4](inclusive).
  • VGG series: For the VGG series, the block ID’s valid for freezing is any subset of [1, 2, 3, 4, 5](inclusive).
  • MobileNet V1: For the MobileNet V1, the block ID’s valid for freezing is any subset of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11](inclusive).
  • MobileNet V2: For the MobileNet V2, the block ID’s valid for freezing is any subset of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13](inclusive).
  • GoogLeNet: For the GoogLeNet, the block ID’s valid for freezing is any subset of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7](inclusive).
freeze_bn Boolean False A flag to determine whether to freeze the Batch Normalization layers in the model during training. True or False

BBox Ground Truth Generator

DetectNet_v2 generates 2 tensors, cov and bbox. The image is divided into 16x16 grid cells. The cov tensor (short for “coverage” tensor) defines the number of grid cells that are covered by an object. The bbox tensor defines the normalized image coordinates of the object top left (x1, y1) and bottom right (x2, y2) with respect to the grid cell. For best results, you can assume the coverage area to be an ellipse within the bbox label with the maximum confidence assigned to the cells in the center and reducing coverage outwards. Each class has its own coverage and bbox tensor, thus the shape of the tensors are as follows:

  • cov: Batch_size, Num_classes, image_height/16, image_width/16

  • bbox: Batch_size, Num_classes * 4, image_height/16, image_width/16 (where 4 is the number of coordinates per cell)

Here is a sample rasterizer config for a 3 class detector:

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# Sample rasterizer configs to instantiate a 3 class bbox rasterizer bbox_rasterizer_config { target_class_config { key: "car" value: { cov_center_x: 0.5 cov_center_y: 0.5 cov_radius_x: 0.4 cov_radius_y: 0.4 bbox_min_radius: 1.0 } } target_class_config { key: "cyclist" value: { cov_center_x: 0.5 cov_center_y: 0.5 cov_radius_x: 0.4 cov_radius_y: 0.4 bbox_min_radius: 1.0 } } target_class_config { key: "pedestrian" value: { cov_center_x: 0.5 cov_center_y: 0.5 cov_radius_x: 0.4 cov_radius_y: 0.4 bbox_min_radius: 1.0 } } deadzone_radius: 0.67 }

The bbox_rasterizer has the following parameters that are configurable:

Parameter

Datatype

Default

Description

Supported Values

deadzone radius float 0.67 The area to be considered dormant (or area of no bbox) around the ellipse of an object. This is particularly useful in cases of overlapping objects so that foreground objects and background objects are not confused. 0-1.0
target_class_config proto dictionary This is a nested configuration field that defines the coverage region for an object of a given class. For each class, this field is repeated. The following are configurable parameters for the target_class_config:
  • cov_center_x (float): x-coordinate of the center of the object
  • cov_center_y (float): y-coordinate of the center of the object
  • cov_radius_x (float): x-radius of the coverage ellipse
  • cov_radius_y (float): y-radius of the coverage ellipse
  • bbox_min_radius (float): The minimum radius of the coverage region to be drawn for boxes
  • cov_center_x: 0.0 - 1.0
  • cov_center_y: 0.0 - 1.0
  • cov_radius_x: 0.0 - 1.0
  • cov_radius_y: 0.0 - 1.0
  • bbox_min_radius: 0.0 - 1.0

Post-Processor

The post-processor module generates renderable bounding boxes from the raw detection output. The process includes the following:

  • Filtering out valid detections by thresholding objects using the confidence value in the coverage tensor.

  • Clustering the raw filtered predictions using DBSCAN to produce the final rendered bounding boxes.

  • Filtering out weaker clusters based on the final confidence threshold derived from the candidate boxes that get grouped into a cluster.

Here is an example of the definition of the post-processor for a 3-class network learning for car, cyclist, and pedestrian:

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postprocessing_config { target_class_config { key: "car" value: { clustering_config { coverage_threshold: 0.005 dbscan_eps: 0.15 dbscan_min_samples: 1 minimum_bounding_box_height: 20 } } } target_class_config { key: "cyclist" value: { clustering_config { coverage_threshold: 0.005 dbscan_eps: 0.15 dbscan_min_samples: 1 minimum_bounding_box_height: 20 } } } target_class_config { key: "pedestrian" value: { clustering_config { coverage_threshold: 0.005 dbscan_eps: 0.15 dbscan_min_samples: 1 minimum_bounding_box_height: 20 } } } }

This section defines parameters that configure the post-processor. For each class that you can train for, the postprocessing_config has a target_class_config element that defines the clustering parameters for this class. The parameters for each target class include the following:

Parameter

Datatype

Default

Description

Supported Values

key string The name of the class for which the post processor module is being configured The network object class name, which is mentioned in the cost_function_config.
value clustering _config proto The nested clustering-config proto parameter that configures the postprocessor module. The parameters for this module are defined in the next table. Encapsulated object with parameters defined below.

The clustering_config element configures the clustering block for this class. Here are the parameters for this element:

Parameter Datatype Default Description Supported Values
coverage_threshold float The minimum threshold of the coverage tensor output to be considered a valid candidate box for clustering. The four coordinates from the bbox tensor at the corresponding indices are passed for clustering. 0.0 - 1.0
dbscan_eps float The maximum distance between two samples for one to be considered in the neighborhood of the other. This is not a maximum bound on the distances of points within a cluster. The greater the dbscan_eps value, the more boxes are grouped together. 0.0 - 1.0
dbscan_min_samples int The total weight in a neighborhood for a point to be considered as a core point. This includes the point itself. >0
minimum_bounding_box_height int The minimum height in pixels to consider as a valid detection post clustering. 0 - input image height
clustering_algorithm enum DBSCAN Defines the post-processing algorithm to cluter raw detections to the final bbox render. When using HYBRID mode, ensure both DBSCAN and NMS configuration parameters are defined. DBSCAN, NMS, HYBRID
dbscan_confidence_threshold float 0.1 The confidence threshold used to filter out the clustered bounding box output from DBSCAN. > 0.0
nms_iou_threshold float 0.2 The Intersection Over Union (IOU) threshold to filter out redundant boxes from raw detections to form final clustered outputs. (0.0 - 1.0)
nms_confidence_threshold float 0. The confidence threshold to filter out clustered bounding boxes from NMS. 0.0 - 1.0

In TAO 3.21.08, DetectNet_v2 supports three methods for clustering raw detections for the network in final rendered bounding boxes.

  • DBSCAN: Density Based Spatial Clustering of Application

  • NMS: Non-Maximal suppression

  • HYDRID: DBSCAN + NMS

Under HYBRID clustering, DetectNet_v2 post-processing first passes the raw network outputs to the DBSCAN clustering and uses the candidate boxes per cluster from DBSCAN as input to NMS. The NMS clustering generates the final rendered boxes.

Note

For HYBRID clustering, ensure both DBSCAN and NMS related parameters are defined in the post-processing config.

Cost Function

This section describes how to configure the cost function to include the classes that you are training for. For each class you want to train, add a new entry for the target classes to the spec file. We recommend not changing the parameters within the spec file for best performance with these classes. The other parameters here should remain unchanged.

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cost_function_config { target_classes { name: "car" class_weight: 1.0 coverage_foreground_weight: 0.05 objectives { name: "cov" initial_weight: 1.0 weight_target: 1.0 } objectives { name: "bbox" initial_weight: 10.0 weight_target: 10.0 } } target_classes { name: "cyclist" class_weight: 1.0 coverage_foreground_weight: 0.05 objectives { name: "cov" initial_weight: 1.0 weight_target: 1.0 } objectives { name: "bbox" initial_weight: 10.0 weight_target: 1.0 } } target_classes { name: "pedestrian" class_weight: 1.0 coverage_foreground_weight: 0.05 objectives { name: "cov" initial_weight: 1.0 weight_target: 1.0 } objectives { name: "bbox" initial_weight: 10.0 weight_target: 10.0 } } enable_autoweighting: True max_objective_weight: 0.9999 min_objective_weight: 0.0001 }

Trainer

The following is a sample training_config block to configure a DetectNet_v2 trainer:

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training_config { batch_size_per_gpu: 16 num_epochs: 80 learning_rate { soft_start_annealing_schedule { min_learning_rate: 5e-6 max_learning_rate: 5e-4 soft_start: 0.1 annealing: 0.7 } } regularizer { type: L1 weight: 3e-9 } optimizer { adam { epsilon: 1e-08 beta1: 0.9 beta2: 0.999 } } cost_scaling { enabled: False initial_exponent: 20.0 increment: 0.005 decrement: 1.0 } visualizer { enabled: true num_images: 3 scalar_logging_frequency: 10 infrequent_logging_frequency: 1 target_class_config { key: "car" value: { coverage_threshold: 0.005 } } target_class_config { key: "pedestrian" value: { coverage_threshold: 0.005 } } } }

The following table describes the parameters used to configure the trainer:

Parameter Datatype Default Description Supported Values
batch_size_per_gpu int 32 The number of images per batch per GPU. >1
num_epochs int 120 The total number of epochs to run the experiment.
enable_qat bool False Enables model training using Quantization Aware Training (QAT). For more information about QAT, see the Quantization Aware Training section. True or False
learning rate learning rate scheduler proto soft_start _annealing _schedule Configures the learning rate schedule for the trainer. Currently, DetectNet_v2 only supports the soft_start annealing learning rate schedule, which may be configured using the following parameters:
  • soft_start (float): The time to ramp up the learning rate from minimum learning rate to maximum learning rate.
  • annealing (float): The time to cool down the learning rate from maximum learning rate to minimum learning rate.
  • minimum_learning_rate (float): The minimum learning rate in the learning rate schedule.
  • maximum_learning_rate (float): The maximum learning rate in the learning rate schedule.
annealing: 0.0-1.0 and greater than soft_start Soft_start: 0.0 - 1.0 A sample lr plot for a soft_start of 0.3 and annealing of 0.1 is shown in the figure below.
regularizer regularizer proto config The type and the weight of the regularizer to be used during training. There are two parameters:
  • type: The type of the regularizer being used.
  • weight: The floating point weight of the regularizer.
The supported values for type are:
  • NO_REG
  • L1
  • L2
optimizer optimizer proto config The optimizer to use for training and the parameters to configure it:
  • epsilon (float): A very small number to prevent any division by zero in the implementation.
  • beta1 (float)
  • beta2 (float)
cost_scaling costscaling _config Enables cost scaling during training. Leave this parameter untouched currently for the DetectNet_v2 training pipe. cost_scaling { enabled: False initial_exponent: 20.0 increment: 0.005 decrement: 1.0 }
checkpoint interval float 0/10 The interval (in epochs) at which train saves intermediate models. 0 to num_epochs

visualizer

visualizer proto config

Configurable elements of the visualizer. DetectNetv2’s visualizer interfaces with TensorBoard.
Please refer to this section for explanation of the configurable elements.

DetectNet_v2 currently supports the soft_start annealing learning rate schedule. The learning rate when plotted as a function of the training progress (0.0, 1.0) results in the following curve:

learning_rate.png

In this experiment, the soft_start was set as 0.3 and annealing as 0.7, with the minimum learning rate as 5e-6 and maximum learning rate, or base_lr, as 5e-4.

Note

We suggest using an L1 regularizer when training a network before pruning, as L1 regularization makes pruning the network weights easier. After pruning, when retraining the networks, we recommend turning regularization off by setting the regularization type to NO_REG.

Visualizer

DetectNet_v2 supports visualization of important metrics, weight histograms and intermediate images via tensorboard. The visualized collaterals are broadly divided into 2 categories

  1. Frequently plotted collaterals: These are scalar values that are plotted as a function on time. These values are plotted more frequently so that you may see a continuous behaviour.

  2. Infrequently plotted collaterals: These include histograms and intermediate images, which consume more resources to plot and are therefore plotted less frequently.

The metrics of the network are plotted as scalar plots which include

  1. Bounding box loss (mean_cost_${class_bbox}): Cost component that computes the accuracy of the bbox coordinates.

  2. Coverage loss (mean_cost_${class_cov}): Cost of the coverage blob that yields the confidence of an object.

  3. Task Cost (task_cost): This is computed as (Coverage loss + Bounding Box loss).

  4. Regularization cost (regularization_cost): Sum of all the regularizer losses in the model.

  5. Total Cost (total_cost): This is computed as the task cost + (regularizer weight * regularization cost).

  6. Validation Cost (validation_cost): This is the total cost computed during evaluation.

  7. Mean Average Precision (mAP): The mean average precision of the network across all classes, as computed during training.

  8. Learning rate (lr): The learning rate applied to the optimizer.

The plotting intervals of the frequent and infrequent collaterals are configurable via the visualizer element of the training config.

Parameter Datatype Default Description Supported Values
enabled bool ‘false’ Flag to enable tensorboard visualization. true or false
num_images int 3 Number of images to be plotted per step 1 < num_images < batch_size
scalar_logging_frequency int 10 Number of points per epoch 1 to num_steps_per_epoch
infrequent_logging_frequency int 1 Interval to plot infrequent visualization collaterals (in number of epochs) 1 to num_epochs
target_class_config proto dictionary This is a nested configuration field that defines the post-processing threshold for the coverage blob to render the raw bounding boxes before clustering. The configurable parameter is
  • coverage_threshold (float): Raw threshold to filter candidate bounding boxes before clustering
  • coverage_threshold: 0.0 - 1.0

The scalar plots of total_cost and validation_cost, are a good indication of how the model training is proceeding. If the 2 plots are converging and decreasing over time, it implies that the network is still learning. However, if the validation_cost starts diverging and rises, while the training_cost plateaus or decreases, it indicates that the network may be overfitting to the training dataset.

Under the images tab, the DetectNet_v2 app renders number of images. The key images of interest are:

  1. images: This shows the input image currently under training

  2. ${class_name}_rectangle_bbox_preds: This image shows the raw predictions of the network before applying NMS/DBSCAN clustering. The outputs seen here are a result of filtering per class by the coverage threshold.

  3. ${class_name}_cov_norm: This is the normalized coverage output, which is a heatmap of the confidence with which the network says that an object exists.

  4. ${class_name}_cov_gt: This is the normalized coverage ground truth, which is a heatmap of the confidence with which the network should say that an object exists.

As training progresses, you will see that the ${class_name}_cov_norm and ${class_name}_cov_gt images look similar, and ${class_name}_rectaging_bbox_preds will only show clusters of bounding boxes around valid objects of that $class_name

Under the histograms tab, you can see the histogram distribution of all the weights in the model. This is a good indicator on how well the regularizers work and how much of the model can be pruned. Using the L1 regularizer, forces the weights to be closer to 0, making the model friendly to pruning. If you see a histogram with the bulk of the distribution around 0, it means that the model will yield good gains when pruned. If the histogram is more flat, then it indicates that you may need to increase the weight of the L1 regularizer, or your model for this dataset, cannot be pruned aggressively.

Augmentation Module

The augmentation module provides some basic pre-processing and augmentation when training. Here is a sample augmentation_config element:

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# Sample augementation config for augmentation_config { preprocessing { output_image_width: 960 output_image_height: 544 output_image_channel: 3 min_bbox_width: 1.0 min_bbox_height: 1.0 } spatial_augmentation { hflip_probability: 0.5 vflip_probability: 0.0 zoom_min: 1.0 zoom_max: 1.0 translate_max_x: 8.0 translate_max_y: 8.0 } color_augmentation { color_shift_stddev: 0.0 hue_rotation_max: 25.0 saturation_shift_max: 0.2 contrast_scale_max: 0.1 contrast_center: 0.5 } }

Note

If the output image height and output image width of the preprocessing block doesn’t match with the dimensions of the input image, the dataloader either pads with zeros or crops to fit to the output resolution. It does not resize the input images and labels to fit.

The augmentation_config contains three elements:

preprocessing: This nested field configures the input image and ground truth label pre-processing module. It sets the shape of the input tensor to the network. The ground truth labels are pre-processed to meet the dimensions of the input image tensors.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
output _image _width int The width of the augmentation output. This is the same as the width of the network input and must be a multiple of 16. >480
output _image _height int The height of the augmentation output. This is the same as the height of the network input and must be a multiple of 16. >272
output _image _channel int 1, 3 The channel depth of the augmentation output. This is the same as the channel depth of the network input. Currently, 1-channel input is not recommended for datasets with JPG images. For PNG images, both 3-channel RGB and 1-channel monochrome images are supported. 1,3
output _image_min int The smaller side of the augmentation output. This is the same as the smaller side of the network input. This is used in the case of input with dynamic shape in FasterRCNN where we specify the smaller side size and the data loader will resize the image such that the smaller side is this number and keep aspect ratio. >272
output _image_max int The larger side of the augmentation output. This is the same as the larger side of the network input. This is used in the case of input with dynamic shape in FasterRCNN where if the smaller side and keep aspect ratio results in the other side exceeding this limit, it will resize such that the larger side is exactly this number and keep aspect ratio so the smaller side does not exceed input_image_min. >272
enable_auto _resize bool False A flag to enable automatic resize during training. When it is set to True, offline resize before the training is no longer required. Enabling this will potentially increase the training time.
min_bbox _height float The minimum height of the object labels to be considered for training. 0 - output_image_height
min_bbox _width float The minimum width of the object labels to be considered for training. 0 - output_image_width
crop_right int The right boundary of the crop to be extracted from the original image. 0 - input image width
crop_left int The left boundary of the crop to be extracted from the original image. 0 - input image width
crop_top int The top boundary of the crop to be extracted from the original image. 0 - input image height
crop_bottom int The bottom boundary of the crop to be extracted from the original image. 0 - input image height
scale_height float The floating point factor to scale the height of the cropped images. > 0.0
scale_width float The floating point factor to scale the width of the cropped images. > 0.0

spatial_augmentation: This module supports basic spatial augmentation such as flip, zoom, and translate, which may be configured.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
hflip_probability float 0.5 The probability to flip an input image horizontally. 0.0-1.0
vflip_probability float 0.0 The probability to flip an input image vertically. 0.0-1.0
zoom_min float 1.0 The minimum zoom scale of the input image. > 0.0
zoom_max float 1.0 The maximum zoom scale of the input image. > 0.0
translate_max_x int 8.0 The maximum translation to be added across the x axis. 0.0 - output_image_width
translate_max_y int 8.0 The maximum translation to be added across the y axis. 0.0 - output_image_height
rotate_rad_max float 0.69 The angle of rotation to be applied to the images and the training labels. The range is defined between [-rotate_rad_max, rotate_rad_max]. > 0.0 (modulo 2*pi

color_augmentation: This module configures the color space transformations, such as color shift, hue_rotation, saturation shift, and contrast adjustment.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
color_shift_stddev float 0.0 The standard devidation value for the color shift. 0.0-1.0
hue_rotation_max float 25.0 The maximum rotation angle for the hue rotation matrix. 0.0-360.0
saturation_shift_max float 0.2 The maximum shift that changes the saturation. A value of 1.0 means no change in saturation shift. 0.0 - 1.0
contrast_scale_max float 0.1 The slope of the contrast as rotated around the provided center. A value of 0.0 leaves the contrast unchanged. 0.0 - 1.0
contrast_center float 0.5 The center around which the contrast is rotated. Ideally, this is set to half of the maximum pixel value. Since our input images are scaled between 0 and 1.0, you can set this value to 0.5. 0.5

The dataloader online augmentation pipeline applies spatial and color-space augmentation transformations in the following order:

  1. The dataloader first performs the pre-processing operations on the input data (image and labels) read from the tfrecords files. Here the images and labels are cropped and scaled based on the parameters mentioned in the preprocessing config. The boundaries for generating the cropped image and labels from the original image is defined by the crop_left, crop_right, crop_top and crop_bottom parameters. This cropped data is then scaled by the scale factors defined by scale_height and scale_width. The transformation matrices for these operations are computed globally and do not change per image.

  2. The net tensors generated from the pre-processing blocks are then passed through a pipeline of random augmentations in spatial and color domains. The spatial augmentations are applied to both images and label coordinates, while the color augmentations are applied only to images. To apply color augmentations, the output_image_channel parameter must be set to 3. For monochrome tensors, color augmentations are not applied. The spatial and color transformation matrices are computed per image, based on a uniform distribution along the maximum and minimum ranges defined by the spatial_augmentation and color_augmentation config parameters.

  3. Once the spatial and color augmented net input tensors are generated, the output is then padded with zeros or clipped along the right and bottom edge of the image to fit the output dimensions defined in the preprocessing config.

Configuring the Evaluator

The evaluator in the detection training pipeline can be configured using the evaluation_config parameters. The following is an example evaluation_config element:

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# Sample evaluation config to run evaluation in integrate mode for the given 3 class model, # at every 10th epoch starting from the epoch 1. evaluation_config { average_precision_mode: INTEGRATE validation_period_during_training: 10 first_validation_epoch: 1 minimum_detection_ground_truth_overlap { key: "car" value: 0.7 } minimum_detection_ground_truth_overlap { key: "person" value: 0.5 } minimum_detection_ground_truth_overlap { key: "bicycle" value: 0.5 } evaluation_box_config { key: "car" value { minimum_height: 4 maximum_height: 9999 minimum_width: 4 maximum_width: 9999 } } evaluation_box_config { key: "person" value { minimum_height: 4 maximum_height: 9999 minimum_width: 4 maximum_width: 9999 } } evaluation_box_config { key: "bicycle" value { minimum_height: 4 maximum_height: 9999 minimum_width: 4 maximum_width: 9999 } } }

The following tables describe the parameters used to configure evaluation:

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
average_precision _mode Sample The mode in which the average precision for each class is calculated.

  • SAMPLE: This is the ap calculation mode using 11 evenly spaced recall points as used in the Pascal VOC challenge 2007.
  • INTEGRATE: This is the ap calculation mode as used in the 2011 challenge
validation_period _during_training int 10 The interval at which evaluation is run during training. The evaluation is run at this interval starting from the value of the first validation epoch parameter as specified below. 1 - total number of epochs
first_validation _epoch int 30 The first epoch to start running validation. Ideally it is preferred to wait for at least 20-30% of the total number of epochs before starting evaluation, since the predictions in the initial epochs would be fairly inaccurate. Too many candidate boxes may be sent to clustering and this can cause the evaluation to slow down. 1 - total number of epochs
minimum_detection _ground_truth_overlap proto dictionary Minimum IOU between ground truth and predicted box after clustering to call a valid detection. This parameter is a repeatable dictionary and a separate one must be defined for every class. The members include:

  • key (string): class name
  • value (float): intersection over union value
evaluation_box_config proto dictionary This nested configuration field configures the min and max box dimensions to be considered as a valid ground truth and prediction for AP calculation.

The evaluation_box_config field has these configurable inputs.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
minimum_height float 10 Minimum height in pixels for a valid ground truth and prediction bbox.
    • model image height
minimum_width float 10 Minimum width in pixels for a valid ground truth and prediction bbox.
    • model image width
maximum_height float 9999 Maximum height in pixels for a valid ground truth and prediction bbox. minimum_height - model image height
maximum_width float 9999 Maximum width in pixels for a valid ground truth and prediction bbox. minimum _width - model image width

Dataloader

The dataloader defines the path to the data you want to train on and the class mapping for classes in the dataset that the network is to be trained for.

The following is an example dataset_config element:

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dataset_config { data_sources: { tfrecords_path: "<path to the training tfrecords root/tfrecords train pattern>" image_directory_path: "<path to the training data source>" } image_extension: "jpg" target_class_mapping { key: "car" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "automobile" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "heavy_truck" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "person" value: "pedestrian" } target_class_mapping { key: "rider" value: "cyclist" } validation_fold: 0 }

In this example the tfrecords is assumed to be multi-fold, and the fold number to validate on is defined. However, evaluation doesn’t necessarily have to be run on a split of the training set. Many ML engineers choose to evaluate the model on a well chosen evaluation dataset that is exclusive of the training dataset. If you prefer to run evaluation on a different validation dataset as opposed to a split from the training dataset, then convert this dataset into tfrecords by using the dataset_convert tool as mentioned here and use the validation_data_source field in the dataset_config to define this dataset to the evaluator . In this case, do not forget to remove the validation_fold field from the spec. When generating the TFRecords for evaluation by using the validation_data_source field, please review the notes here.

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validation_data_source: { tfrecords_path: " <path to tfrecords to validate on>/tfrecords validation pattern>" image_directory_path: " <path to validation data source>" }

The parameters in dataset_config are defined as follows:

  • data_sources: Captures the path to tfrecords to train on. This field contains 2 parameters:

    • tfrecords_path: Path to the individual tfrecords files. This path follows the UNIX style pathname pattern extension, so a common pathname pattern that captures all the tfrecords files in that directory can be used.

    • image_directory_path: Path to the training data root from which the tfrecords was generated.

  • image_extension: Extension of the images to be used.

  • target_class_mapping: This parameter maps the class names in the tfrecords to the target class to be trained in the network. An element is defined for every source class to target class mapping. This field was included with the intention of grouping similar class objects under one umbrella. For example: car, van, heavy_truck etc may be grouped under automobile. The “key” field is the value of the class name in the tfrecords file and the “value” field corresponds to the value that the network is expected to learn.

  • validation_fold: In case of an n fold tfrecords, you define the index of the fold to use for validation. For sequencewise validation choose the validation fold in the range [0, N-1]. For random split partitioning, force the validation fold index to 0 as the tfrecord is just 2-fold.

Note

The class names key in the target_class_mapping must be identical to the one shown in the dataset converter log, so that the correct classes are picked up for training.

Specification File for Inference

This spec file configures the infer tool of detectnet to generate valid bbox predictions. The inference tool consists of 2 blocks, namely the inferencer and the bbox handler. The inferencer instantiates the model object and preprocessing pipe. The bbox handler handles the post processing, rendering of bounding boxes and the serialization to KITTI format output labels.

Inferencer

The inferencer instantiates a model object that generates the raw predictions from the trained model. The model may be defined to run inference in the TAO backend or the TensorRT backend.

A sample inferencer_config element for the inferencer spec is defined here:

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inferencer_config{ # defining target class names for the experiment. # Note: This must be mentioned in order of the networks classes. target_classes: "car" target_classes: "cyclist" target_classes: "pedestrian" # Inference dimensions. image_width: 1248 image_height: 384 # Must match what the model was trained for. image_channels: 3 batch_size: 16 gpu_index: 0 # model handler config tensorrt_config{ parser: ETLT etlt_model: "/path/to/model.etlt" backend_data_type: INT8 save_engine: true trt_engine: "/path/to/trt/engine/file" calibrator_config{ calibration_cache: "/path/to/calibration/cache" n_batches: 10 batch_size: 16 } } }

The inferencer_config parameters are explained in the table below.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
target_classes String (repeated) None The names of the target classes the model should output. For a multi-class model this parameter is repeated N times. The number of classes must be equal to the number of classes and the order must be the same as the classes in costfunction_config of the training config file. For example, for the 3 class kitti model it will be:
  • car
  • cyclist
  • pedestrian
batch_size int 1 The number of images per batch of inference. Max number of images that can be fit in 1 GPU
image_height int 384 The height of the image in pixels at which the model will be inferred. >16
image_width int 1248 The width of the image in pixels at which the model will be inferred. >16
image_channels int 3 The number of channels per image. 1,3
gpu_index int 0 The index of the GPU to run inference on. This is useful only in TAO inference. For tensorRT inference, by default, the GPU of choice in ‘0’.
tensorrt_config TensorRTConfig None Proto config to instantiate a TensorRT object.
tlt_config TLTConfig None Proto config to instantiate a TLT model object.

As mentioned earlier, the infer tool is capable of running inference using the native TAO backend and the TensorRT backend. They can be configured by using the tensorrt_config proto element or the tlt_config proto element respectively. You may use only one of the two in a single spec file. The definitions of the two model objects are:

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
parser enum ETLT The tensorrt parser to be invoked. Only ETLT parser is supported. ETLT
etlt_model string None Path to the exported etlt model file. Any existing etlt file path.
backend_data _type enum FP32 The data type of the backend TensorRT inference engine. For int8 mode, be sure to mention the calibration_cache. FP32 FP16 INT8
save_engine bool False Flag to save a TensorRT engine from the input etlt file. This will save initialization time if inference needs to be run on the same etlt file and there are no changes needed to be made to the inferencer object. True, False
trt_engine string None Path to the TensorRT engine file. This acts an I/O parameter. If the path defined here is not an engine file, then the infer tool creates a new TensorRT engine from the etlt file. If there exists an engine already, the tool re-instantiates the inferencer from the engine defined here. UNIX path string
calibration _config CalibratorConfig Proto None This is a required parameter when running in the int8 inference mode. This proto object contains parameters used to define a calibrator object. Namely: calibration_cache: path to the calibration cache file generated using export.

TLT_Config

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
model string None The path to the .tlt model file.
Note

Since detectnet is a full convolutional neural net, the model can be inferred at a different inference resolution than the resolution at which it was trained. The input dims of the network will be overridden to run inference at this resolution, if they are different from the training resolution. There may be some regression in accuracy when running inference at a different resolution since the convolutional kernels don’t see the object features at this shape.

Bbox Handler

The bbox handler takes care of the post processing the raw outputs from the inferencer. It performs the following steps:

  1. Thresholding the raw outputs to defines grid cells where the detections may be present per class.

  2. Reconstructing the image space coordinates from the raw coordinates of the inferencer.

  3. Clustering the raw thresholded predictions.

  4. Filtering the clustered predictions per class.

  5. Rendering the final bounding boxes on the image in its input dimensions and serializing them to KITTI format metadata.

A sample bbox_handler_config element is defined below.

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bbox_handler_config{ kitti_dump: true disable_overlay: false overlay_linewidth: 2 classwise_bbox_handler_config{ key:"car" value: { confidence_model: "aggregate_cov" output_map: "car" bbox_color{ R: 0 G: 255 B: 0 } clustering_config{ coverage_threshold: 0.005 dbscan_eps: 0.3 dbscan_min_samples: 1 dbscan_confidence_threshold: 0.9 minimum_bounding_box_height: 4 } } } classwise_bbox_handler_config{ key:"default" value: { confidence_model: "aggregate_cov" bbox_color{ R: 255 G: 0 B: 0 } clustering_config{ coverage_threshold: 0.005 dbscan_eps: 0.3 dbscan_min_samples: 1 dbscan_confidence_threshold: 0.9 minimum_bounding_box_height: 4 } } } }

The parameters to configure the bbox handler are defined below.

Parameter Datatype Default/Suggested value Description Supported Values
kitti_dump bool false Flag to enable saving the final output predictions per image in KITTI format. true, false
disable_overlay bool true Flag to disable bbox rendering per image. true, false
overlay _linewidth int 1 Thickness in pixels of the bbox boundaries. >1
classwise_bbox _handler_config ClasswiseCluster Config (repeated) None This is a repeated class-wise dictionary of post-processing parameters. DetectNet_v2 uses dbscan clustering to group raw bboxes to final predictions. For models with several output classes, it may be cumbersome to define a separate dictionary for each class. In such a situation, a default class may be used for all classes in the network.

The classwise_bbox_handler_config is a Proto object containing several parameters to configure the clustering algorithm as well as the bbox renderer.

Parameter Datatype Default / Suggested value Description Supported Values
confidence _model string aggregate_cov Algorithm to compute the final confidence of the clustered bboxes. In the aggregate_cov mode, the final confidence of a detection is the sum of the confidences of all the candidate bboxes in a cluster. In mean_cov mode, the final confidence is the mean confidence of all the bboxes in the cluster. aggregate_cov, mean_cov
bbox_color BBoxColor Proto Object None RGB channel wise color intensity per box. R: 0 - 255 G: 0 - 255 B: 0 - 255
clustering_config ClusteringConfig None Proto object to configure the DBSCAN, NMS or HYBRID clustering algorithm. It leverages the same parameters as defined in the postprocessing_config of the training config. Please refer here for more explanation about the parameters.

After creating TFRecords ingestible by the TAO training (as outlined in Preprocessing the Dataset) and setting up a spec file, you are now ready to start training an object detection network.

The following outlines the DetectNet_v2 training command:

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tao model detectnet_v2 train [-h] -k <key> -r <result directory> -e <spec_file> [-n <name_string_for_the_model>] [--gpus <num GPUs>] [--gpu_index <comma separate gpu indices>] [--use_amp] [--log_file <log_file>]

Required Arguments

  • -r, --results_dir: The path to a folder where experiment outputs should be written.

  • -k, –key: A user-specific encoding key to save or load a .tlt model.

  • -e, --experiment_spec_file: The path to the spec file. The path may be absolute or relative to the working directory. By default, the spec from spec_loader.py is used.

Optional Arguments

  • -n, --model_name: The name of the final step model saved. If not provided, defaults to the model.

  • --gpus: The number of GPUs to use and processes to launch for training. The default value is 1.

  • --gpu_index: The indices of the GPUs to use for training. The GPUs are referenced as per the indices mentioned in the ./deviceQuery CUDA samples.

  • --use_amp: When defined, this flag enables Automatic Mixed Precision mode.

  • --log_file: The path to the log file. Defaults to stdout.

  • -h, --help: Show this help message and exit.

Input Requirement

  • Input size: C * W * H (where C = 1 or 3, W > =480, H >=272 and W, H are multiples of 16)

  • Image format: JPG, JPEG, PNG

  • Label format: KITTI detection

Note

The train tool does not support training on images of multiple resolutions. However, the dataloader does support resizing images to the input resolution defined in the specification file. This can be enabled by setting the enable_auto_resize parameter to true in the augmentation_config module of the spec file.

Sample Usage

Here is an example of a command for training with two GPUs:

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tao model detectnet_v2 train -e <path_to_spec_file> -r <path_to_experiment_output> -k <key_to_load_the_model> -n <name_string_for_the_model> --gpus 2

Note

The train tool does not support training on images of multiple resolutions, or resizing images during training. All of the images must be resized offline to the final training size and the corresponding bounding boxes must be scaled accordingly.

Note

DetectNet_v2 now supports resuming training from intermediate checkpoints. When a previously running training experiment is stopped prematurely, one may restart the training from the last checkpoint by simply re-running the detectnet_v2 training command with the same command line arguments as before. The trainer for detectnet_v2 finds the last saved checkpoint in the results directory and resumes the training from there. The interval at which the checkpoints are saved are defined by the checkpoint_interval parameter under the “training_config” for detectnet_v2. More, during training, the saved checkpoint number equals to the following formula: checkpoint_number = epoch_num * ceil(ceil((training_images)/gpu_nums)/batch_size_per_gpu )

Execute evaluate on a DetectNet_v2 model.

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tao model detectnet_v2 evaluate [-h] -e <experiment_spec -m <model_file> -k <key> [--use_training_set] [--gpu_index]

Required Arguments

  • -e, --experiment_spec_file: The experiment spec file to set up the evaluation experiment. This should be the same as training spec file.

  • -m, --model: The path to the model file to use for evaluation. This could be a .tlt model file or a tensorrt engine generated using the export tool.

  • -k, -–key: The encryption key to decrypt the model. This argument is only required with a .tlt model file.

Optional Arguments

  • -h, --help: Show this help message and exit.

  • -f, --framework: The framework to use when running evaluation (choices: “tlt”, “tensorrt”). By default the framework is set to TensorRT.

  • --use_training_set: Set this flag to run evaluation on the training dataset.

  • --gpu_index: The index of the GPU to run evaluation on.

If you have followed the example in Training a Detection Model, you may now evaluate the model using the following command:

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tao model detectnet_v2 evaluate -e <path to training spec file> -m <path to the model> -k <key to load the model>

Note

This command runs evaluation on the same validation set that was used during training.

Use these steps to evaluate on a test set with ground truth labeled:

  1. Create tfrecords for this training set by following the steps listed in the data input section.

  2. Update the dataloader configuration part of the training spec file to include the newly generated tfrecords. For more information on the dataset config, refer to Creating an Experiment Spec File. You may create the tfrecords with any partition mode (sequence/random). The evaluate tool iterates through all the folds in the tfrecords patterns mentioned in the validation_data_source.

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dataset_config { data_sources: { tfrecords_path: "<path to training tfrecords root>/<tfrecords_name*>" image_directory_path: "<path to training data root>" } image_extension: "jpg" target_class_mapping { key: "car" value: "car" } target_class_mapping { key: "automobile" value: "car" } .. .. .. target_class_mapping { key: "person" value: "pedestrian" } target_class_mapping { key: "rider" value: "cyclist" } validation_data_source: { tfrecords_path: "<path to testing tfrecords root>/<tfrecords_name*>" image_directory_path: "<path to testing data root>" } }

The rest of the experiment spec file should remain the same as the training spec file.

The infer task for detectnet_v2 may be used to visualize bboxes and/or generate frame-by-frame KITTI format labels on a single image or directory of images. An example of the command for this task is shown below:

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tao model detectnet_v2 inference [-h] -e </path/to/inference/spec/file> -i </path/to/inference/input> -o </path/to/inference/output> -k <model key>

Required Parameters

  • -e, --inference_spec: The path to an inference spec file.

  • -i, --inference_input: The directory of input images or a single image for inference.

  • -o, --inference_output: The directory to the output images and labels. The annotated images are in inference_output/images_annotated and labels are in inference_output/labels.

  • -k, --enc_key: The key to load the model.

The tool automatically generates bbox rendered images in output_path/images_annotated. To get the bbox labels in KITTI format, configure the bbox_handler_config spec file using the kitti_dump parameter as mentioned here. This will generate the output in output_path/labels.

Pruning removes parameters from the model to reduce the model size without compromising the integrity of the model itself using the prune command.

The prune task includes these parameters:

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tao model detectnet_v2 prune [-h] -pm <pretrained_model> -o <output_file> -k <key> [-n <normalizer>] [-eq <equalization_criterion>] [-pg <pruning_granularity>] [-pth <pruning threshold>] [-nf <min_num_filters>] [-el [<excluded_list>]

Required Arguments

  • -pm, --pretrained_model: The path to the pretrained model.

  • -o, --output_file: The path to the output checkpoints.

  • -k, --key: The key to load a .tlt model.

Optional Arguments

  • -h, --help: Show this help message and exit.

  • -n, –normalizer: Specify max to normalize by dividing each norm by the maximum norm within a layer; specify L2 to normalize by dividing by the L2 norm of the vector comprising all kernel norms. The default value is max.

  • -eq, --equalization_criterion: Criteria to equalize the stats of inputs to an element-wise op layer or depth-wise convolutional layer. This parameter is useful for resnets and mobilenets. The options are arithmetic_mean, geometric_mean, union, and intersection (default: union).

  • -pg, -pruning_granularity: The number of filters to remove at a time (default:8)

  • -pth: The threshold to compare the normalized norm against (default:0.1)

  • -nf, --min_num_filters: The minimum number of filters to keep per layer (default:16)

  • -el, --excluded_layers: A list of excluded_layers (e.g. -i item1 item2) (default: [])

After pruning, the model needs to be retrained. See Re-training the Pruned Model for more details.

Using the Prune Command

Here’s an example of using the prune task:

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tao model detectnet_v2 prune -m /workspace/output/weights/resnet_003.tlt -o /workspace/output/weights/resnet_003_pruned.tlt -eq union -pth 0.7 -k $KEY

Once the model has been pruned, there might be a slight decrease in accuracy because some previously useful weights may have been removed. To regain the accuracy, we recommend that you retrain this pruned model over the same dataset using the train task, as documented in the Training the model section, with an updated spec file that points to the newly pruned model as the pretrained model file.

You should turn off the regularizer in the training_config for detectnet to recover the accuracy when retraining a pruned model. You may do this by setting the regularizer type to NO_REG as mentioned here. All other parameters may be retained in the spec file from the previous training.

To load the pretrained model, set the load_graph flag under model_config to true.

Exporting the model decouples the training process from deployment and allows conversion to TensorRT engines outside the TAO environment. TensorRT engines are specific to each hardware configuration and should be generated for each unique inference environment. This may be interchangeably referred to as a .trt or .engine file. The same exported TAO model may be used universally across training and deployment hardware. This is referred to as the .etlt file, or encrypted TAO file. During model export, the TAO model is encrypted with a private key, which is required when you deploy this model for inference.

Note

In TAO versions 5.0.0 and later, the tao model detectnet_v2 export command serializes the exported model directly to an unencrypted .onnx file.

INT8 Mode Overview

TensorRT engines can be generated in INT8 mode to run with lower precision, and thus improve performance. This process requires a cache file that contains scale factors for the tensors to help combat quantization errors, which may arise due to low-precision arithmetic. The calibration cache is generated using a calibration tensorfile when export is run with the --data_type flag set to int8. Pre-generating the calibration information and caching it removes the need for calibrating the model on the inference machine. Moving the calibration cache is usually much more convenient than moving the calibration tensorfile since it is a much smaller file and can be moved with the exported model. Using the calibration cache also speeds up engine creation as building the cache can take several minutes to generate depending on the size of the Tensorfile and the model itself.

The export tool can generate an INT8 calibration cache by ingesting training data using one of these options:

  • Option 1: Providing a calibration tensorfile generated using the calibration_tensorfile task defined in DetectNet_v2. This command uses the data generators in the training pipeline to produce a drop of preprocessed batches of input images from the training dataset. Using this gives users the opportunity to maintain a record of the exact batches of the training data used to generate the calibration scale factors in the calibration cache file. However, this is a two-step process for generating an int8 cache file.

  • Option 2: Pointing the tool to a directory of images that you want to use to calibrate the model. For this option, you will need to create a sub-sampled directory of random images that best represent your training dataset.

  • Option 3: Using the training data loader directly to load the training images for INT8 calibration. This option is now the recommended approach as it helps to generate multiple random samples. This also ensures two important aspects of the data during calibration:

    • Data pre-processing in the INT8 calibration step is the same as in the training process.

    • The data batches are sampled randomly across the entire training dataset, thereby improving the accuracy of the int8 model.

    • Calibration occurs as a one-step process with the data batches being generated on the fly.

NVIDIA plans to eventually deprecate Option 1 and only support Options 2 and 3.

tao_int8_calibration.png

FP16/FP32 Model

The calibration.bin is only required if you need to run inference at INT8 precision. For FP16/FP32 based inference, the export step is much simpler. All that is required is to provide a model from the train step to export to convert it into an encrypted TAO model.

fp16_fp32_export.png

Generating an INT8 tensorfile Using the calibration_tensorfile Command

The INT8 tensorfile is a binary file that contains the preprocessed training samples, which may be used to calibrate the model. In this release, TAO only supports calibration tensorfile generation for SSD, DSSD, DetectNet_v2, and classification models.

The sample usage for the calibration_tensorfile command to generate a calibration tensorfile is defined below:

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tao model detectnet_v2 calibration_tensorfile [-h] -e <path to training experiment spec file> -o <path to output tensorfile> -m <maximum number of batches to serialize> [--use_validation_set]

Required Arguments

  • -e, --experiment_spec_file: The path to the experiment spec file (only required for SSD and FasterRCNN).

  • -o, --output_path: The path to the output tensorfile that will be created.

  • -m, --max_batches: The number of batches of input data to be serialized.

Optional Argument

  • --use_validation_set: A flag specifying whether to use the validation dataset instead of the training set.

The following is a sample command to invoke the calibration_tensorfile command for a classification model:

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tao model detectnet_v2 calibration_tensorfile -e $SPECS_DIR/classification_retrain_spec.cfg -m 10 -o $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/export/calibration.tensor

Exporting the DetectNet_v2 Model

The following are command line arguments of the export command:

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tao model detectnet_v2 export [-h] -m <path to the .tlt model file generated by tao model train> [-k <key>] [-o <path to output file [.onnx]>] [--cal_data_file <path to tensor file>] [--cal_image_dir <path to the directory images to calibrate the model] [--cal_cache_file <path to output calibration file>] [--data_type <Data type for the TensorRT backend during export>] [--batches <Number of batches to calibrate over>] [--max_batch_size <maximum trt batch size>] [--max_workspace_size <maximum workspace size] [--batch_size <batch size to TensorRT engine>] [--experiment_spec <path to experiment spec file>] [--engine_file <path to the TensorRT engine file>] [--verbose Verbosity of the logger] [--force_ptq Flag to force PTQ] [--gen_ds_config Generate DeepStream config] [--onnx_route Backend library to be used to export the model.]

Required Arguments

  • -m, --model: The path to the .tlt or .hdf5 keras model file to be exported using export.

  • -k, --key: The key used to save the .tlt model file.

  • -e, --experiment_spec: The path to the spec file. This argument is required for faster_rcnn, ssd, dssd, yolo, and retinanet.

Optional Arguments

  • -o, --output_file: The path to save the exported onnx model to. The default path is ./<input_file>.onnx.

  • --gen_ds_config: A Boolean flag indicating whether to generate the template DeepStream related configuration (“nvinfer_config.txt”) as well as a label file (“labels.txt”) in the same directory as the output_file. Note that the config file is NOT a complete configuration file and requires the user to update the sample config files in DeepStream with the parameters generated.

  • --gpu_index: The index of (discrete) GPUs used for exporting the model. You can specify the GPU index used to run evaluation when the machine has multiple GPUs installed. Note that export can only run on a single GPU.

  • --log_file: The path to the log file. The default path is stdout.

  • -h, --help: Show this help message and exit.

  • --onnx_route: The backend library to use for serializing the .tlt/.hdf5 model to .onnx. The choices are keras2onnx or tf2onnx.

QAT Export Mode Required Arguments

  • --cal_json_file: The path to the JSON file containing the tensor scales for QAT models. This argument is required if the engine for the QAT model is being generated.

Note

When exporting a model trained with QAT enabled, the tensor scale factors to calibrate the activations are peeled out of the model and serialized to a JSON file defined by the cal_json_file argument.

Sample usage for the export sub-task

The following is a sample command to export a DetectNet_v2 model in INT8 mode. This command shows option 1: using the --cal_data_file option with the calibration.tensor generated using the calibration_tensorfile sub-task.

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tao model detectnet_v2 export -e $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/experiment_dir_retrain/experiment_spec.txt -m $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/experiment_dir_retrain/weights/resnet18_detector_pruned.tlt -o $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/experiment_dir_final/resnet18_detector.onnx -k $KEY

The following is an example log of a successful export:

Generating a Template DeepStream Config File

TAO supports serializing a template config file for the nvinfer element of deepstream to consume this model. This config file contains the network specific pre-processing parameters and network graph parameters for parsing the etlt model file. It also generates a label file that contains the names of the classes that the model was trained for in the order in which the outputs are generated. To generate the deepstream config, simply run the export command using the --gen_ds_config option.

The following example shows how to generate the DeepStream config:

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tao model detectnet_v2 export -m $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/detectnet_v2/model.tlt -o $USER_EXPERIMENT_DIR/detectnet_v2/model.int8.onnx -e $SPECS_DIR/detectnet_v2_kitti_retrain_spec.txt --gen_ds_config

The template DeepStream config is generated in the same directory as the output model file as nvinfer_config.txt, while the labels are serialized in labels.txt file. Sample output of the nvinfer_config.txt and labels.txt are as follows:

  • Sample nvinfer_config.txt

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    net-scale-factor=0.00392156862745098 offsets=0;0;0 infer-dims=3;544;960 tlt-model-key=tlt_encode network-type=0 num-detected-classes=3 uff-input-order=0 output-blob-names=output_cov/Sigmoid;output_bbox/BiasAdd uff-input-blob-name=input_1 model-color-format=0

  • Sample labels.txt

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    person bag face

Note

The nvinfer_config.txt file that is generated by export is NOT a complete config_infer_*.txt file that can be replaced into the DeepStream config file. You need to find and replace the parameters defined in this file, with the parameters in the default config_infer_*.txt file.

For TensorRT engine generation, validation, and INT8 calibration, refer to the TAO Deploy documentation.

Refer to the Integrating a DetectNet_v2 Model page for more information about deploying a DetectNet_v2 model to DeepStream.

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