Intelligent road surface state recognition method based on multi-layer attention residual network

Abstract Data-driven road surface state recognition enhances the efficiency and accuracy of road management, contributing to increased safety and reliability in road traffic. However, traditional machine learning and deep learning-based road surface state recognition typically rely on extensive data for model training, making it challenging to adapt to complex tasks in diverse scenarios. Therefore, this paper proposes a Multi-layer Attention Residual Network (MARN)-based intelligent road surface state recognition method. First, a Residual Convolutional Neural Network (ResNet) is constructed as the backbone model of MARN to mitigate the gradient vanishing problem, allowing the network to extract deeper features. Subsequently, an adaptive multi-layer attention mechanism is introduced in each convolutional layer, enabling adaptive weighting of each feature channel in the dataset to enhance the model’s focus on different features for better feature extraction. Furthermore, a cosine annealing learning rate adjuster is designed to improve the accuracy, robustness, and convergence during the model training process. Finally, the proposed MARN is validated using an image dataset containing six different road surface states. Comparative studies are conducted on the recognition accuracy of the proposed MARN, original ResNet, Visual Geometry Group network (VGG16), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The impact of different batch sizes on the convergence speed of road surface state recognition under MARN is also analyzed. Results demonstrate that MARN achieves a training set accuracy of over 95%, surpassing VGG16 and CNN with accuracies below 85%. Compared to ResNet, MARN exhibits a 1.3% higher training set accuracy and a 0.25 lower validation set loss, showcasing superior accuracy and robustness in road surface state recognition.