A comprehensive approach for waste management with GAN-augmented classification

Image processing and computer vision highly rely on data augmentation in machine learning models to increase the diversity and variability within training datasets for better performance. One of the most promising and widely used applications of data augmentation is in classifying waste object images. This research focuses on augmenting waste object images with generative adversarial networks (GANS). Here deep convolutional GAN (DCGAN), an extension of GAN is utilized, which uses convolutional and convolutional-transpose layers for better image generation. This approach helps generate realism and variability in images. Furthermore, object detection and classification techniques are used. By utilizing ensemble learning techniques with <i>DenseNet121, ConvNext, and Resnet101</i>, the network can accurately identify and classify waste objects in images, thereby contributing to improved waste management practices and environmental sustainability. With ensemble learning, a notable accuracy of 99.80% was achieved. Thus, by investigating the effectiveness of these models in conjunction with data augmentation techniques, this novel approach of GAN-based augmentation cooperated with ensemble models aims to provide valuable insights into optimizing waste object identification processes for real-world applications. Future work will focus on better data augmentation methods with other types of GANS architectures and introducing multimodal sources of data to further increase the performance of the classification and detection models.