Applicability of Deep Learned vs Traditional Features for Depth Based Classification

Abstract

In robotic applications often highly specific objects need to be recognized, e.g. industrial parts, for which methods can't rely on the online availability of large labeled training data sets or pre-trained models. This is especially valid for depth data, thus making it challenging for deep learning (DL) approaches. Therefore, this work analyzes the performance of various traditional (global or part-based) and DL features on a restricted depth data set, depending on the tasks complexity. While the sample size is small, we can conclude that pre-trained DL descriptors are the most descriptive but not by a statistically significant margin and therefore part-based descriptors are still a viable option for small but difficult 3D data sets.