A new firefly algorithm-based superpixel clustering method for vehicle segmentation

The vehicle segmentation in the images of a crowded and unstructured road traffic, having inconsistent driving patterns and vivid attributes like colour, shapes, and size, is a complex task. For the same, this paper presents a new firefly algorithm-based superpixel clustering method for vehicle segmentation. The proposed method introduces a modified firefly algorithm by incorporating the best solution for enhancing the exploitation behaviour and solution precision. The modified firefly algorithm is further used to obtain the optimal superpixel clusters. The modified firefly algorithm is compared against state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithms on IEEE CEC 2015 benchmark problems in terms of mean fitness value, Wilcoxon rank-sum test, convergence behaviour, and box plot. The proposed meta-heuristic algorithm performed superior on more than 80% of the considered benchmark problems. Moreover, the modified firefly algorithm is statistically better on more than 92% of the total problems during Wilcoxon test. Further, the proposed segmentation method is analysed on a traffic dataset to segment the auto-rickshaw. The performance of the proposed method has been compared with kmeans-based superpixel clustering method. The proposed method shows the highest mean value of 0.6242 for Dice coefficient. Both qualitative and quantitative results affirm the efficacy of the proposed method.