Performance-guided Reinforced Active Learning for Object Detection

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liang, Zhixuan, Zeng, Xingyu, Zhao, Rui, Luo, Ping
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Liang, Zhixuan
Zeng, Xingyu
Zhao, Rui
Luo, Ping
author_facet Liang, Zhixuan
Zeng, Xingyu
Zhao, Rui
Luo, Ping
contents Active learning (AL) strategies aim to train high-performance models with minimal labeling efforts, only selecting the most informative instances for annotation. Current approaches to evaluating data informativeness predominantly focus on the data's distribution or intrinsic information content and do not directly correlate with downstream task performance, such as mean average precision (mAP) in object detection. Thus, we propose Performance-guided (i.e. mAP-guided) Reinforced Active Learning for Object Detection (MGRAL), a novel approach that leverages the concept of expected model output changes as informativeness. To address the combinatorial explosion challenge of batch sample selection and the non-differentiable correlation between model performance and selected batches, MGRAL skillfully employs a reinforcement learning-based sampling agent that optimizes selection using policy gradient with mAP improvement as reward. Moreover, to reduce the computational overhead of mAP estimation with unlabeled samples, MGRAL utilizes an unsupervised way with fast look-up tables, ensuring feasible deployment. We evaluate MGRAL's active learning performance on detection tasks over PASCAL VOC and COCO benchmarks. Our approach demonstrates the highest AL curve with convincing visualizations, establishing a new paradigm in reinforcement learning-driven active object detection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15688
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Performance-guided Reinforced Active Learning for Object Detection
Liang, Zhixuan
Zeng, Xingyu
Zhao, Rui
Luo, Ping
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Active learning (AL) strategies aim to train high-performance models with minimal labeling efforts, only selecting the most informative instances for annotation. Current approaches to evaluating data informativeness predominantly focus on the data's distribution or intrinsic information content and do not directly correlate with downstream task performance, such as mean average precision (mAP) in object detection. Thus, we propose Performance-guided (i.e. mAP-guided) Reinforced Active Learning for Object Detection (MGRAL), a novel approach that leverages the concept of expected model output changes as informativeness. To address the combinatorial explosion challenge of batch sample selection and the non-differentiable correlation between model performance and selected batches, MGRAL skillfully employs a reinforcement learning-based sampling agent that optimizes selection using policy gradient with mAP improvement as reward. Moreover, to reduce the computational overhead of mAP estimation with unlabeled samples, MGRAL utilizes an unsupervised way with fast look-up tables, ensuring feasible deployment. We evaluate MGRAL's active learning performance on detection tasks over PASCAL VOC and COCO benchmarks. Our approach demonstrates the highest AL curve with convincing visualizations, establishing a new paradigm in reinforcement learning-driven active object detection.
title Performance-guided Reinforced Active Learning for Object Detection
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15688