Applicability of Detection Transformers in Resource-Constrained Environments : Investigating Detection Transformer Performance Under Computational Limitations and Scarcity of Annotated Data

Abstract: Object detection is a fundamental task in computer vision, with significant applications in various domains. However, the reliance on large-scale annotated data and computational resource demands poses challenges in practical implementation. This thesis aims to address these complexities by exploring self-supervised training approaches for the detection transformer(DETR) family of object detectors. The project investigates the necessity of training the backbone under a semi-supervised setting and explores the benefits of initializing scene graph generation architectures with pretrained DETReg and DETR models for faster training convergence and reduced computational resource requirements. The significance of this research lies in the potential to mitigate the dependence on annotated data and make deep learning techniques more accessible to researchers and practitioners. By overcoming the limitations of data and computational resources, this thesis contributes to the accessibility of DETR and encourages a more sustainable and inclusive approach to deep learning research.