Autoencoder-based Semantic Novelty Detection: Towards Dependable AI-based Systems

Abstract: Many autonomous systems, such as driverless taxis, perform safety critical functions. Autonomous systems employ AI techniques, specifically for the environment perception. Engineers cannot completely test or formally verify AI-based autonomous systems. The accuracy of AI-based systems depends on the quality of training data. Thus, novelty detection - identifying data that differ in some respect from the data used for training - becomes a safety measure for system development and operation. In this paper, we propose a new architecture for autoencoder-based semantic novelty detection with two innovations: architectural guidelines for a semantic autoencoder topology and a semantic error calculation as novelty criteria. We demonstrate that such a semantic novelty detection outperforms autoencoder-based novelty detection approaches known from literature by minimizing false negatives.