Unsupervised Image Dataset Annotation Framework for Snow Covered Road Networks

Abstract

Road surface condition estimation plays a crucial role in road safety and maintenance, especially in adverse weather conditions like snowfall. In this paper, we introduce a framework for unsupervised annotation of a dataset describing road snow cover level. This framework relies on feature learning using autoencoders and graph clustering using the Louvain community detection algorithm. We also incorporate time and weather data to facilitate the annotation process. We evaluate our method by assessing its different steps and comparing it to another density-based clustering method. We also present a large image dataset describing four road cover states in urban scenes, including different weather and visual conditions. The dataset comprises 41346 images collected from road monitoring cameras installed in Montreal, Canada, during the 2022 winter season. This dataset intends to help integrate computer vision techniques in planning snow removal operations.