CollideNet: Hierarchical Multi-scale Video Representation Learning with Disentanglement for Time-To-Collision Forecasting

TL;DR

CollideNet enhances time-to-collision forecasting precision by disentangling temporal patterns in multi-scale video representation learning.

cs.CV 🔴 Advanced 2026-04-18 32 views
Nishq Poorav Desai Ali Etemad Michael Greenspan
video representation learning time prediction multi-scale disentanglement Transformer

Key Findings

Methodology

CollideNet is a hierarchical multi-scale Transformer-based architecture specifically designed for time-to-collision forecasting. In the spatial stream, it aggregates information for each video frame simultaneously at multiple resolutions. In the temporal stream, it disentangles non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components for multi-scale feature encoding. This method achieves state-of-the-art performance on three public datasets: Dashcam Accident Dataset (DAD), Car Crash Dataset (CCD), and Detection of Traffic Anomaly Dataset (DoTA).

Key Results

  • On the CCD dataset, CollideNet achieved an MSE of 0.37, improving by 30% over the second-best method. On the DoTA and DAD datasets, it achieved MSEs of 1.75 and 0.71, respectively, outperforming existing methods.
  • Cross-dataset evaluation shows CollideNet achieved an MSE of 1.711 in the CCD-to-DoTA transfer, demonstrating superior generalization capabilities.
  • Ablation studies reveal that disentangling trend and seasonality components significantly enhances forecasting performance, especially when used with the multi-scale architecture.

Significance

The introduction of CollideNet holds significant implications for both academia and industry. It not only addresses the challenge of capturing multi-scale features in video data but also enhances temporal prediction accuracy through the disentanglement of trend and seasonality components. This method offers more reliable collision warnings for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), potentially reducing traffic accident rates significantly.

Technical Contribution

CollideNet introduces several technical innovations. Firstly, it employs a hierarchical multi-scale Transformer architecture capable of capturing both short-term and long-term spatial and temporal features. Secondly, by disentangling non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components of video data, CollideNet achieves unprecedented accuracy in temporal encoding. Additionally, the method optimizes computational complexity, maintaining high performance while reducing computational costs.

Novelty

CollideNet is the first to introduce the disentanglement of temporal patterns, including non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality, in the context of time-to-collision forecasting. This innovation enables CollideNet to better capture multi-scale features in video data, resulting in significant performance improvements compared to existing methods.

Limitations

  • CollideNet may struggle with prediction accuracy under extreme weather conditions, as these conditions can affect video clarity and stability.
  • The computational cost remains high for high-resolution videos, potentially limiting its use in real-time applications.
  • In complex traffic scenarios, background noise may interfere with model learning, affecting prediction accuracy.

Future Work

Future research directions include further optimizing CollideNet's computational efficiency for broader real-time application use. Additionally, exploring the application of this method to other types of video data, such as sports events or surveillance footage, could verify its applicability across different scenarios.

AI Executive Summary

Time-to-collision forecasting is a critical task in autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), requiring precise temporal predictions from video data. However, existing methods fall short in capturing multi-scale features, making high-precision temporal predictions challenging.

To address this issue, researchers have introduced CollideNet, a hierarchical multi-scale Transformer-based architecture. CollideNet processes video data through two streams: a spatial stream that aggregates frame information at multiple resolutions and a temporal stream that disentangles non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components for temporal encoding.

The core technical principles of CollideNet include: 1) using multi-scale aggregation techniques in the spatial stream to capture both local and global features; 2) employing disentanglement techniques in the temporal stream to separate non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components, thereby enhancing temporal prediction accuracy.

Experimental results demonstrate that CollideNet achieves state-of-the-art performance on three public datasets: Dashcam Accident Dataset (DAD), Car Crash Dataset (CCD), and Detection of Traffic Anomaly Dataset (DoTA). Notably, on the CCD dataset, it reduces MSE by 30% compared to the second-best method. Cross-dataset evaluations further highlight CollideNet's superior generalization capabilities.

The introduction of CollideNet not only holds significant academic value but also provides a more reliable collision warning solution for the industry, potentially reducing traffic accident rates significantly. However, the method may struggle with prediction accuracy under extreme weather conditions, and its computational cost remains high for high-resolution videos, potentially limiting its use in real-time applications.

Future research directions include further optimizing CollideNet's computational efficiency for broader real-time application use. Additionally, exploring the application of this method to other types of video data, such as sports events or surveillance footage, could verify its applicability across different scenarios.

Deep Analysis

Background

In autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), time-to-collision forecasting is a crucial task. Recent advances in video processing technology have led researchers to explore how video data can be used to achieve more accurate temporal predictions. Traditional methods primarily rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to extract spatial and temporal features. However, these methods have limitations in capturing multi-scale features in video data, making it difficult to handle both short-term and long-term dependencies simultaneously.


To address these challenges, researchers have begun exploring Transformer-based architectures, as Transformers excel at capturing long-range dependencies. However, traditional Transformer architectures face high computational complexity when processing video data, especially high-resolution videos. Therefore, finding a way to maintain high performance while reducing computational costs has become a pressing challenge.

Core Problem

The core problem of time-to-collision forecasting is accurately predicting the time of collision between objects in a video. This task requires models to capture both local and global features in the video and handle multi-scale features in video data. However, existing methods fall short in this regard, making high-precision temporal predictions challenging. Additionally, the non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components in video data pose additional challenges for temporal prediction. Effectively disentangling and encoding these components is key to achieving high-precision temporal predictions.

Innovation

CollideNet achieves innovation in several areas:


  • �� Spatial Stream: CollideNet aggregates video frame information at multiple resolutions to capture both local and global features. This design addresses the shortcomings of traditional methods in capturing multi-scale features.

  • �� Temporal Stream: CollideNet enhances temporal encoding by disentangling non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components in video data. This innovation allows CollideNet to better capture multi-scale features in video data.

  • �� Computational Complexity Optimization: CollideNet maintains high performance while optimizing computational complexity, reducing computational costs when processing high-resolution videos.

Methodology

The design of CollideNet includes the following key steps:


  • �� Spatial Stream: Aggregates video frame information at multiple resolutions to capture both local and global features. Input: video frames; Output: multi-scale spatial features.

  • �� Temporal Stream: Enhances temporal encoding by disentangling non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components. Input: multi-scale spatial features; Output: disentangled temporal features.

  • �� Combines features from the spatial and temporal streams for time-to-collision prediction. Input: disentangled temporal features; Output: predicted time-to-collision.

Experiments

The experimental design includes evaluations on three public datasets: Dashcam Accident Dataset (DAD), Car Crash Dataset (CCD), and Detection of Traffic Anomaly Dataset (DoTA). Baseline models include CNN-RNN, C3D, VGG-16, Li3D, HyCT, and VidNeXt. The evaluation metric is Mean Squared Error (MSE), and key hyperparameters include learning rate, batch size, and training epochs. Additionally, ablation studies were conducted to determine the impact of each key component.

Results

Experimental results show that CollideNet achieves an MSE of 0.37 on the CCD dataset, improving by 30% over the second-best method. On the DoTA and DAD datasets, it achieves MSEs of 1.75 and 0.71, respectively, outperforming existing methods. Cross-dataset evaluation shows CollideNet achieved an MSE of 1.711 in the CCD-to-DoTA transfer, demonstrating superior generalization capabilities. Ablation studies reveal that disentangling trend and seasonality components significantly enhances forecasting performance, especially when used with the multi-scale architecture.

Applications

Application scenarios for CollideNet include autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), providing more reliable collision warning capabilities. Additionally, the method can be applied to other types of video data, such as sports events or surveillance footage, to verify its applicability across different scenarios.

Limitations & Outlook

CollideNet may struggle with prediction accuracy under extreme weather conditions, as these conditions can affect video clarity and stability. Additionally, the computational cost remains high for high-resolution videos, potentially limiting its use in real-time applications. In complex traffic scenarios, background noise may interfere with model learning, affecting prediction accuracy. Future research directions include further optimizing CollideNet's computational efficiency for broader real-time application use.

Plain Language Accessible to non-experts

Imagine you're in a kitchen cooking a meal. The kitchen has many different tools and ingredients, each with its own purpose. CollideNet is like a smart chef who can use multiple tools and ingredients at the same time to create a delicious dish. In this process, the chef needs to choose the right tools and cooking methods based on the characteristics of different ingredients.

In video processing, CollideNet is like this smart chef. A video is like the ingredients in the kitchen, with different resolutions and features. CollideNet processes video data through two streams: a spatial stream that aggregates frame information at multiple resolutions, like the chef using different tools at different times.

Additionally, CollideNet decomposes video data, like the chef preparing and cutting ingredients before cooking. This process helps CollideNet better understand the trends and seasonal features in video data, improving prediction accuracy.

In summary, CollideNet is like a smart chef who uses tools and ingredients wisely to create a delicious dish, i.e., high-precision time-to-collision forecasting.

ELI14 Explained like you're 14

Hey there! Did you know that in self-driving cars, there's a super important task called time-to-collision forecasting? Imagine you're playing a racing game, and when you're about to hit an obstacle, the game warns you in advance so you have time to avoid it. Time-to-collision forecasting is like this warning system.

CollideNet is a smart system that can predict collision time by analyzing video. It's like doing experiments at school, where CollideNet observes every detail in the video and makes smart judgments.

This system has two main parts: one is the spatial stream, which is like your eyes, seeing every detail in the video; the other is the temporal stream, which is like your brain, analyzing these details and predicting the future.

CollideNet also decomposes video data, like when you break down a complex math problem into smaller parts to solve it. This way, it can better understand the trends and changes in the video, making more accurate predictions. Cool, right?

Glossary

Transformer

A deep learning model for processing sequential data, excelling at capturing long-range dependencies.

CollideNet uses a Transformer architecture to capture multi-scale features in videos.

Time-To-Collision (TTC)

The predicted time until a collision occurs between objects.

The main task of CollideNet is to predict time-to-collision in videos.

Multi-scale

The ability to process data at multiple resolutions or time scales simultaneously.

CollideNet captures both local and global features using a multi-scale approach.

Disentanglement

The process of breaking down complex data into multiple simpler components.

CollideNet disentangles non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components to enhance prediction accuracy.

Non-stationarity

The phenomenon where the statistical properties of data change over time.

CollideNet improves temporal encoding by disentangling non-stationarity.

Trend

The long-term direction of data changes over time.

CollideNet disentangles trend components to enhance temporal prediction accuracy.

Seasonality

The repetitive patterns in data that occur periodically.

CollideNet disentangles seasonality components to enhance temporal prediction accuracy.

Mean Squared Error (MSE)

A metric for evaluating model prediction accuracy, with lower values indicating more accurate predictions.

CollideNet achieves the lowest MSE across multiple datasets.

Dashcam Accident Dataset (DAD)

A dataset containing dashcam collision videos used to evaluate time-to-collision forecasting models.

CollideNet achieves state-of-the-art performance on the DAD dataset.

Car Crash Dataset (CCD)

A dataset containing car crash videos used to evaluate time-to-collision forecasting models.

CollideNet shows significant performance improvements on the CCD dataset.

Detection of Traffic Anomaly Dataset (DoTA)

A dataset used for detecting traffic anomalies in videos.

CollideNet performs well on the DoTA dataset.

Cross-dataset Evaluation

Testing a model's generalization capabilities across different datasets.

CollideNet demonstrates superior generalization capabilities in cross-dataset evaluations.

Ablation Study

Evaluating the impact of removing or replacing certain components of a model on overall performance.

Ablation studies show that disentangling trend and seasonality components significantly enhance forecasting performance.

Hierarchical

Organizing data or model structures into multiple layers to better handle complexity.

CollideNet uses a hierarchical architecture to capture both short-term and long-term spatial and temporal features.

Attention Mechanism

A technique for selectively focusing on different parts of input data.

CollideNet uses attention mechanisms to capture multi-scale features in videos.

Open Questions Unanswered questions from this research

  • 1 How can time-to-collision prediction accuracy be improved under extreme weather conditions? Existing methods may struggle with prediction accuracy under these conditions. More robust models are needed to address these challenges.
  • 2 How can CollideNet's computational cost be further reduced for high-resolution videos? While CollideNet optimizes computational complexity, the cost remains high when processing high-resolution videos.
  • 3 In complex traffic scenarios, how can background noise interference with model learning be minimized? Background noise may affect model learning, leading to decreased prediction accuracy.
  • 4 How can CollideNet be applied to other types of video data, such as sports events or surveillance footage? Its applicability across different scenarios needs to be verified.
  • 5 How can CollideNet's computational efficiency be further optimized for broader real-time application use? More efficient algorithms need to be developed to achieve this goal.
  • 6 How can CollideNet's parameter count be further reduced while maintaining high performance? New model compression techniques need to be explored.
  • 7 How can CollideNet's training time be reduced without affecting prediction accuracy? More efficient training strategies need to be developed.

Applications

Immediate Applications

Autonomous Driving

CollideNet can be used in collision warning systems for autonomous vehicles to improve driving safety. Car manufacturers can integrate this technology to reduce traffic accidents.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)

CollideNet can enhance ADAS functionality by providing more accurate time-to-collision predictions, helping drivers react in a timely manner.

Traffic Monitoring

CollideNet can be used in urban traffic monitoring systems to detect traffic anomalies in real-time, improving traffic management efficiency.

Long-term Vision

Smart Cities

CollideNet can become part of smart city traffic management systems, helping achieve more efficient traffic flow control and accident prevention.

Unmanned Driving

As technology matures, CollideNet is expected to play a significant role in the field of unmanned driving, improving the safety and reliability of autonomous vehicles.

Abstract

Time-to-Collision (TTC) forecasting is a critical task in collision prevention, requiring precise temporal prediction and comprehending both local and global patterns encapsulated in a video, both spatially and temporally. To address the multi-scale nature of video, we introduce a novel spatiotemporal hierarchical transformer-based architecture called CollideNet, specifically catered for effective TTC forecasting. In the spatial stream, CollideNet aggregates information for each video frame simultaneously at multiple resolutions. In the temporal stream, along with multi-scale feature encoding, CollideNet also disentangles the non-stationarity, trend, and seasonality components. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in comparison to prior works on three commonly used public datasets, setting a new state-of-the-art by a considerable margin. We conduct cross-dataset evaluations to analyze the generalization capabilities of our method, and visualize the effects of disentanglement of the trend and seasonality components of the video data. We release our code at https://github.com/DeSinister/CollideNet/.

cs.CV

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