Exploiting adversarial style for generalized and robust weed segmentation in rice paddy field

Yaoxuan Zhang¹Hao Cai¹Jiahui Ye¹Fubin Pan¹Shuanglong Wu¹Bob Zhang²Long Qi^3*Ruijun Ma^1*

• ¹College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
• ²Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Macau, Taipa, Macao, SAR China
• ³College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China

In precision agriculture, effective weed management is pivotal for enhancing rice cultivation yield and quality. However, accurately differentiating weeds from rice crops remains a fundamental challenge for precision weeding. This study introduces an innovative deep-learning methodology based on style transfer for weed identification and segmentation in paddy fields. We introduce a Style-guided Weed Instance Segmentation (SWIS) method that integrates a Random Adaptive Instance Normalization (RAIN) module for stochastic style transformation and a Dynamic Gradient Back-propagation (DGB) module for adversarial feature optimization. Specifically, the RAIN module aligns feature distributions between laboratory and field environments through stochastic style transformation, enhancing cross-environment generalization. The DGB module employs adversarial optimization with gradient-guided perturbations to enhance feature robustness under complex field conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves a Weed Intersection over Union (Weed IoU) of 70.49% on field data, significantly outperforming comparison methods. Therefore, this approach proves effective for real-world applications. Beyond its immediate applications, this research advances computer vision integration in agriculture and establishes a robust foundation for developing more sophisticated, versatile weed recognition models.