# A Diffusion-based Data Generator for Training Object Recognition Models in Ultra-Range Distance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09846 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09846/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Conditional Image Synthesis With Auxiliary Classifier GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.09585/) (2016)
- [ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12348/) (2023)
- [DiffusionDet: Diffusion Model for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09788/) (2022)
- [Pros and Cons of GAN Evaluation Measures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03446/) (2018)
- [Machine Learning for Synthetic Data Generation: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04062/) (2023)
- [CovidGAN: Data Augmentation Using Auxiliary Classifier GAN for Improved Covid-19 Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05094/) (2021)
- [Automatic Ship Detection of Remote Sensing Images from Google Earth in Complex Scenes Based on Multi-Scale Rotation Dense Feature Pyramid Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.04331/) (2018)
- [GestureGAN for Hand Gesture-to-Gesture Translation in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04859/) (2018)
- [It GAN DO Better: GAN-based Detection of Objects on Images with Varying Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01707/) (2019)
- [The Imaginative Generative Adversarial Network: Automatic Data Augmentation for Dynamic Skeleton-Based Hand Gesture and Human Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13061/) (2021)
- [Ultra-Range Gesture Recognition using a Web-Camera in Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15361/) (2023)
- [Leveraging Image-based Generative Adversarial Networks for Time Series Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08060/) (2021)
- [Graph Convolutional Networks: analysis, improvements and results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.09592/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object recognition, commonly performed by a camera, is a fundamental requirement for robots to complete complex tasks. Some tasks require recognizing objects far from the robot's camera. A challenging example is Ultra-Range Gesture Recognition (URGR) in human-robot interaction where the user exhibits directive gestures at a distance of up to 25~m from the robot. However, training a model to recognize hardly visible objects located in ultra-range requires an exhaustive collection of a significant amount of labeled samples. The generation of synthetic training datasets is a recent solution to the lack of real-world data, while unable to properly replicate the realistic visual characteristics of distant objects in images. In this letter, we propose the Diffusion in Ultra-Range (DUR) framework based on a Diffusion model to generate labeled images of distant objects in various scenes. The DUR generator receives a desired distance and class (e.g., gesture) and outputs a corresponding synthetic image. We apply DUR to train a URGR model with directive gestures in which fine details of the gesturing hand are challenging to distinguish. DUR is compared to other types of generative models showcasing superiority both in fidelity and in recognition success rate when training a URGR model. More importantly, training a DUR model on a limited amount of real data and then using it to generate synthetic data for training a URGR model outperforms directly training the URGR model on real data. The synthetic-based URGR model is also demonstrated in gesture-based direction of a ground robot.