A Study on Fault Tolerance of Image Sensor-based Object Detection in Indoor Navigation

Sammanfattning: With the fast development of embedded deep-learning computing systems, applications powered by deep learning are moving from the cloud to the edge. When deploying NN onto the devices under complex environments, there are various types of possible faults: soft errors caused by cosmic radiation and radioactive impurities, voltage instability, aging, temperature variations, etc. Thus, more attention is drawn on the reliability of the NN embedded system. In this project, we build a virtual simulation system in Gazebo to simulate and test the working of an embedded NN system in the virtual environment in indoor navigation. The system can detect objects in the virtual environment with the help of the virtual camera(the image sensor) and the object detection module, which is based on YOLO v3, and make corresponding control decisions. We also designed and simulated the corresponding error injection module according to the working principle of the image sensor, and tested the functionality, and fault tolerance of the YOLO network. At the same time, network pruning algorithm is also introduced to study the relationship between different degrees of network pruning and network fault tolerance to sensor faults.