Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Tree-Based Unidirectional Neural Networks For Low-Power Computer Vision, Abhinav Goel, Caleb Tung, Nick Eliopoulos, Amy Wang, Jamie C. Davis, George K. Thiruvathukal, Yung-Hisang Lu

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article describes the novel Tree-based Unidirectional Neural Network (TRUNK) architecture. This architecture improves computer vision efficiency by using a hierarchy of multiple shallow Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), instead of a single very deep CNN. We demonstrate this architecture’s versatility in performing different computer vision tasks efficiently on embedded devices. Across various computer vision tasks, the TRUNK architecture consumes 65% less energy and requires 50% less memory than representative low-power CNN architectures, e.g., MobileNet v2, when deployed on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.