Semi-supervised Domain Adaptation via Sample-to-Sample Self-Distillation

Abstract: Semi-supervised domain adaptation (SSDA) is to adapt a learner to a new domain with only a small set of labeled samples when a large labeled dataset is given on a source domain. In this paper, we propose a pair-based SSDA method that adapts a model to the target domain using self-distillation with sample pairs. Each sample pair is composed of a teacher sample from a labeled dataset (i.e., source or labeled target) and its student sample from an unlabeled dataset (i.e., unlabeled target). Our method generates an assistant feature by transferring an intermediate style between the teacher and the student, and then train the model by minimizing the output discrepancy between the student and the assistant. During training, the assistants gradually bridge the discrepancy between the two domains, thus allowing the student to easily learn from the teacher. Experimental evaluation on standard benchmarks shows that our method effectively minimizes both the inter-domain and intra-domain discrepancies, thus achieving significant improvements over recent methods.