Joint Future Semantic and Instance Segmentation Prediction

TL;DR: A novel prediction approach that encodes instance and semantic segmentation information in a single representation based on distance maps is introduced, and graph-based modeling of the instance segmentation prediction problem allows for temporal tracks of the objects as an optimal solution to a watershed algorithm.

Abstract: The ability to predict what will happen next from observing the past is a key component of intelligence. Methods that forecast future frames were recently introduced towards better machine intelligence. However, predicting directly in the image color space seems an overly complex task, and predicting higher level representations using semantic or instance segmentation approaches were shown to be more accurate. In this work, we introduce a novel prediction approach that encodes instance and semantic segmentation information in a single representation based on distance maps. Our graph-based modeling of the instance segmentation prediction problem allows us to obtain temporal tracks of the objects as an optimal solution to a watershed algorithm. Our experimental results on the Cityscapes dataset present state-of-the-art semantic segmentation predictions, and instance segmentation results outperforming a strong baseline based on optical flow.