Relative attribute based incremental learning for image recognition

Abstract

In this study, we propose an incremental learning approach based on a machine-machine interaction via relative attribute feedbacks that exploit comparative relationships among top level image categories. One machine acts as ‘Student (S)’ with initially limited information and it endeavors to capture the task domain gradually by questioning its mentor on a pool of unlabeled data. The other machine is ‘Teacher (T)’ with the implicit knowledge for helping S on learning the class models. T initiates relative attributes as a communication channel by randomly sorting the classes on attribute space in an unsupervised manner. S starts modeling the categories in this intermediate level by using only a limited number of labeled data. Thereafter, it first selects an entropy-based sample from the pool of unlabeled data and triggers the conversation by propagating the selected image with its belief class in a query. Since T already knows the ground truth labels, it not only decides whether the belief is true or false, but it also provides an attribute-based feedback to S in each case without revealing the true label of the query sample if the belief is false. So the number of training data is increased virtually by dropping the falsely predicted sample back into the unlabeled pool. Next, S updates the attribute space which, in fact, has an impact on T's future responses, and then the category models are updated concurrently for the next run. We experience the weakly supervised algorithm on the real world datasets of faces and natural scenes in comparison with direct attribute prediction and semi-supervised learning approaches, and a noteworthy performance increase is achieved.