A Semi-Supervised Domain Adaptation Method for Sim2Real Object Detection in Autonomous Mining Trucks

In open-pit mining, autonomous trucks are essential for enhancing both safety and productivity. Object detection technology is critical to their smooth and secure operation, but training these models requires large amounts of high-quality annotated data representing various conditions. It is expensive and time-consuming to collect these data during open-pit mining due to the harsh environmental conditions. Simulation engines have emerged as an effective alternative, generating diverse labeled data to augment real-world datasets. However, discrepancies between simulated and real-world environments, often referred to as the Sim2Real domain shift, reduce model performance. This study addresses these challenges by presenting a novel semi-supervised domain adaptation for object detection (SSDA-OD) framework named Adamix, which is designed to reduce domain shift, enhance object detection, and minimize labeling costs. Adamix builds on a mean teacher architecture and introduces two key modules: progressive intermediate domain construction (PIDC) and warm-start adaptive pseudo-label (WSAPL). PIDC builds intermediate domains using a mixup strategy to reduce source domain bias and prevent overfitting, while WSAPL provides adaptive thresholds for pseudo-labeling, mitigating false and missed detections during training. When evaluated in a Sim2Real scenario, Adamix shows superior domain adaptation performance, achieving a higher mean average precision (mAP) compared with state-of-the-art methods, with 50% less labeled data required, achieved through active learning. The results demonstrate that Adamix significantly reduces dependence on costly real-world data collection, offering a more efficient solution for object detection in challenging open-pit mining environments.