WaveCRNet: Wavelet Transform-Guided Learning for Semantic Segmentation in Adverse Railway Scenes

Semantic segmentation is pivotal in autonomous train perception, significantly impacting the system’s intelligence and reliability. However, its performance in railway scenes is hindered by various challenges, including severe weather conditions, low-light situations, tunnel settings, and diverse and dynamic unstructured scenes. To address these challenges, this study proposes WaveCRNet, a novel architecture for real-time semantic segmentation in challenging conditions, simulating wavelet-constrained PID controller in feature and wavelet space. This study first designs an effective wavelet information enhancement algorithm using a differentiable wavelet transform to bridge the gap between the wavelet and feature information domains. Then, the wavelet-guided attention pag module (WAPM) is introduced to guide the learning and fusion of detailed features based on wavelet priors. Moreover, the traditional wavelet transforms are spectral aliasing and shift sensitivity. Inspired by dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT), the DTCWT-based channel reconstruction module (DCRM) is designed to assist the channel-based learning of boundary information from coarse to fine. Finally, the proposed architecture is evaluated by the public dataset RailSem19. The experimental results validate the consistent performance gains between accuracy and inference speed, improving by 63.7% mIoU and 87 FPS, surpassing those of the advanced methods for real-time segmentation.