An Unsupervised Approach to Place-Specific Change Classification

In this study, we address the problem of supervised change detection for robotic map learning applications, in which the aim is to train a place-specific change classifier (e.g., support vector machine (SVM)) to predict changes from a robot's view image. An open question is the manner in which to partition a robot's workspace into places (e.g., SVMs) to maximize the overall performance of change classifiers. This is a chicken-or-egg problem: if we have a well-trained change classifier, partitioning the robot's workspace into places is rather easy; However, training a change classifier requires a set of place-specific training data. In this study, we address this novel problem, which we term unsupervised place discovery. In addition, we present a solution powered by convolutional-feature-based visual place recognition, and validate our approach by applying it to two place-specific change classifiers, namely, nuisance and anomaly predictors.