ELASTIC: Efficient Once For All Iterative Search for Object Detection on Microcontrollers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tran, Tony, Lin, Qin, Hu, Bin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914394230751232
author Tran, Tony
Lin, Qin
Hu, Bin
author_facet Tran, Tony
Lin, Qin
Hu, Bin
contents Deploying high-performance object detectors on TinyML platforms poses significant challenges due to tight hardware constraints and the modular complexity of modern detection pipelines. Neural Architecture Search (NAS) offers a path toward automation, but existing methods either restrict optimization to individual modules, sacrificing cross-module synergy, or require global searches that are computationally intractable. We propose ELASTIC (Efficient Once for AlL IterAtive Search for ObjecT DetectIon on MiCrocontrollers), a unified, hardware-aware NAS framework that alternates optimization across modules (e.g., backbone, neck, and head) in a cyclic fashion. ELASTIC introduces a novel Population Passthrough mechanism in evolutionary search that retains high-quality candidates between search stages, yielding faster convergence, up to an 8% final mAP gain, and eliminates search instability observed without population passthrough. In a controlled comparison, empirical results show ELASTIC achieves +4.75% higher mAP and 2x faster convergence than progressive NAS strategies on SVHN, and delivers a +9.09% mAP improvement on PascalVOC given the same search budget. ELASTIC achieves 72.3% mAP on PascalVOC, outperforming MCUNET by 20.9% and TinyissimoYOLO by 16.3%. When deployed on MAX78000/MAX78002 microcontrollers, ELASTICderived models outperform Analog Devices' TinySSD baselines, reducing energy by up to 71.6%, lowering latency by up to 2.4x, and improving mAP by up to 6.99 percentage points across multiple datasets. The experimental videos and codes are available on the project website (https://nail-uh.github.io/elastic.github.io/).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_21999
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ELASTIC: Efficient Once For All Iterative Search for Object Detection on Microcontrollers
Tran, Tony
Lin, Qin
Hu, Bin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Deploying high-performance object detectors on TinyML platforms poses significant challenges due to tight hardware constraints and the modular complexity of modern detection pipelines. Neural Architecture Search (NAS) offers a path toward automation, but existing methods either restrict optimization to individual modules, sacrificing cross-module synergy, or require global searches that are computationally intractable. We propose ELASTIC (Efficient Once for AlL IterAtive Search for ObjecT DetectIon on MiCrocontrollers), a unified, hardware-aware NAS framework that alternates optimization across modules (e.g., backbone, neck, and head) in a cyclic fashion. ELASTIC introduces a novel Population Passthrough mechanism in evolutionary search that retains high-quality candidates between search stages, yielding faster convergence, up to an 8% final mAP gain, and eliminates search instability observed without population passthrough. In a controlled comparison, empirical results show ELASTIC achieves +4.75% higher mAP and 2x faster convergence than progressive NAS strategies on SVHN, and delivers a +9.09% mAP improvement on PascalVOC given the same search budget. ELASTIC achieves 72.3% mAP on PascalVOC, outperforming MCUNET by 20.9% and TinyissimoYOLO by 16.3%. When deployed on MAX78000/MAX78002 microcontrollers, ELASTICderived models outperform Analog Devices' TinySSD baselines, reducing energy by up to 71.6%, lowering latency by up to 2.4x, and improving mAP by up to 6.99 percentage points across multiple datasets. The experimental videos and codes are available on the project website (https://nail-uh.github.io/elastic.github.io/).
title ELASTIC: Efficient Once For All Iterative Search for Object Detection on Microcontrollers
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21999