On the performance evaluation of object classification models in low altitude aerial data

This paper compares the classification performance of machine learning classifiers vs. deep learning-based handcrafted models and various pretrained deep networks. The proposed study performs a comprehensive analysis of object classification techniques implemented on low-altitude UAV datasets using various machine and deep learning models. Multiple UAV object classification is performed through widely deployed machine learning-based classifiers such as K nearest neighbor, decision trees, naïve Bayes, random forest, a deep handcrafted model based on convolutional layers, and pretrained deep models. The best result obtained using random forest classifiers on the UAV dataset is 90%. The handcrafted deep model's accuracy score suggests the efficacy of deep models over machine learning-based classifiers in low-altitude aerial images. This model attains 92.48% accuracy, which is a significant improvement over machine learning-based classifiers. Thereafter, we analyze several pretrained deep learning models, such as VGG-D, InceptionV3, DenseNet, Inception-ResNetV4, and Xception. The experimental assessment demonstrates nearly 100% accuracy values using pretrained VGG16- and VGG19-based deep networks. This paper provides a compilation of machine learning-based classifiers and pretrained deep learning models and a comprehensive classification report for the respective performance measures.