TwinLiteNet+: An Enhanced Multi-Task Segmentation Model for Autonomous Driving
This addresses the need for efficient, real-time perception on resource-constrained embedded devices in autonomous driving, though it is incremental as it builds on prior segmentation models.
The paper tackles the problem of real-time semantic segmentation for autonomous driving by introducing TwinLiteNet+, an enhanced multi-task model that achieves 92.9% mIoU for drivable area and 34.2% IoU for lane segmentation on BDD100K while reducing FLOPs by 11x compared to SOTA.
Semantic segmentation is a fundamental perception task in autonomous driving, particularly for identifying drivable areas and lane markings to enable safe navigation. However, most state-of-the-art (SOTA) models are computationally intensive and unsuitable for real-time deployment on resource-constrained embedded devices. In this paper, we introduce TwinLiteNet+, an enhanced multi-task segmentation model designed for real-time drivable area and lane segmentation with high efficiency. TwinLiteNet+ employs a hybrid encoder architecture that integrates stride-based dilated convolutions and depthwise separable dilated convolutions, balancing representational capacity and computational cost. To improve task-specific decoding, we propose two lightweight upsampling modules-Upper Convolution Block (UCB) and Upper Simple Block (USB)-alongside a Partial Class Activation Attention (PCAA) mechanism that enhances segmentation precision. The model is available in four configurations, ranging from the ultra-compact TwinLiteNet+_{Nano} (34K parameters) to the high-performance TwinLiteNet+_{Large} (1.94M parameters). On the BDD100K dataset, TwinLiteNet+_{Large} achieves 92.9% mIoU for drivable area segmentation and 34.2% IoU for lane segmentation-surpassing existing state-of-the-art models while requiring 11x fewer floating-point operations (FLOPs) for computation. Extensive evaluations on embedded devices demonstrate superior inference speed, quantization robustness (INT8/FP16), and energy efficiency, validating TwinLiteNet+ as a compelling solution for real-world autonomous driving systems. Code is available at https://github.com/chequanghuy/TwinLiteNetPlus.