Hybrid Deep Learning for Traceability and Classification of Industrial Slate Tiles
2026-07-06 • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed a smart computer system that can recognize and match pictures of slate tiles and also figure out where the tiles came from. They combined two methods: one that looks closely at details to match tiles and another that classifies the tiles' origin, all in one model. Their approach made matching tiles more accurate by over 15% and guessing the origin better by nearly 11%. They tested this system on a new set of 2,610 slate tile images from different locations and showed it works well for industry needs.
deep learninginstance-aware reidentificationimage classificationfeature matchingMobileNetV3XFeatLightGlueindustrial datasetslate tilesAUC
Authors
Soren Antebi, Stefan Eickeler, Sandra Halscheidt, Rene Schmitz, Michael Muellers, Dirk Hecker, Rafet Sifa
Abstract
Applying deep learning to instance-aware reidentification of slate tiles and extraction site classification can improve production efficiency and quality control in the slate tile industry. These tasks are particularly important for handling natural materials where visual variability can make manual inspection costly and error-prone. We present a lightweight, hybrid deep learning approach that combines image matching and classification within a single framework. The system integrates a feature-matching branch based on XFeat with a MobileNetV3- based classification branch. The XFeat branch, combined with a LightGlue matching head, improves instance matching performance by +15.4% AUC. For classification, features from both backbones are shared and fused, resulting in a +10.9% accuracy improvement over a standard MobileNetV3 model. Our approach is evaluated on a newly created industrial dataset consisting of 2,610 slate tile images from six extraction sites. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for object re-identification and classification in an industrial setting.