Tutorial Series: Instance Segmentation on Vector's camera feed

Part 1: How is instance segmentation different from object detection?

In a previous tutorial, we discussed how to train a Machine Learning model to allow your Vector robot to detect another Vector robot in its camera feed. We trained a YOLOv5 model to do object detection, in this specific case, the goal is to create a rectangular bounding box around wherever the model was able to detect the presence of another Vector robot.

Object detection vs instance segmentation

In most cases, object detection works very well on a live video stream. Models such as YOLOv8 can perform object detection very fast, and easily support detection speeds of 60 frames per second. However, one of the limitations of object detection is that it constructs rectangular bounding boxes around the object. Thus, the contour of the object is not available. In some cases the rectangular bounding box might give an inaccurate idea of the position of the object in the picture. This leads us to instance segmentation. Instance segmentation attempts to classify each pixel of the image, thereby …