Leveraging Meta-Learning To Improve Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Abstract Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) techniques in real-world scenarios often encounter limitations due to their reliance on reducing distribution dissimilarity between source and target domains, assuming it leads to effective adaptation. However, they overlook the intricate factors causing domain shifts, including data distribution variations, domain-specific features and nonlinear relationships, thereby hindering robust performance in challenging UDA tasks. The Neuro-Fuzzy Meta-Learning (NF-ML) approach overcomes traditional UDA limitations with its flexible framework that adapts to intricate, nonlinear domain gaps without rigid assumptions. NF-ML enhances domain adaptation by selecting a UDA subset and optimizing their weights via a neuro-fuzzy system, utilizing meta-learning to efficiently adapt models to new domains using previously acquired knowledge. This approach mitigates domain adaptation challenges and bolsters traditional UDA methods’ performance by harnessing the strengths of multiple UDA methods to enhance overall model generalization. The proposed approach shows potential in advancing domain adaptation research by providing a robust and efficient solution for real-world domain shifts. Experiments on three standard image datasets confirm the proposed approach’s superiority over state-of-the-art UDA methods, validating the effectiveness of meta-learning. Remarkably, the Office+Caltech 10, ImageCLEF-DA and combined digit datasets exhibit substantial accuracy gains of 30.9%, 6.8% and 10.9%, respectively, compared with the best-second baseline UDA approach.