Advanced semantic segmentation of aircraft main components based on transfer learning and data-driven approach

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Abstract The implementation of Smart Airport and Airport 4.0 visions relies on the integration of automation, artificial intelligence, data science, and aviation technology to enhance passenger experiences and operational efficiency. One essential factor in the integration is the semantic segmentation of the aircraft main components (AMC) perception, which is essential to maintenance, repair, and operations in aircraft and airport operations. However, AMC segmentation has challenges from low data availability, high-quality annotation scarcity, and categorical imbalance, which are common in practical applications, including aviation. This study proposes a novel AMC segmentation solution, employing a transfer learning framework based on a sophisticated DeepLabV3 architecture optimized with a custom-designed Focal Dice Loss function. The proposed solution remarkably suppresses the categorical imbalance challenge and increases the dataset variability with manually annotated images and dynamic augmentation strategies to train a robust AMC segmentation model. The model achieved a notable intersection over union of 84.002% and an accuracy of 91.466%, significantly advancing the AMC segmentation performance. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed AMC segmentation solution in aircraft and airport operation scenarios. This study provides a pioneering solution to the AMC semantic perception problem and contributes a valuable dataset to the community, which is fundamental to future research on aircraft and airport semantic perception. Graphical abstract