A Deep Learning-Based Fragment Detection Approach for the Arena Fragmentation Test

The arena fragmentation test (AFT) is one of the tests used to design an effective warhead. Conventionally, complex and expensive measuring equipment is used for testing a warhead and measuring important factors such as the size, velocity, and the spatial distribution of fragments where the fragments penetrate steel target plates. In this paper, instead of using specific sensors and equipment, we proposed the use of a deep learning-based object detection algorithm to detect fragments in the AFT. To this end, we acquired many high-speed videos and built an AFT image dataset with bounding boxes of warhead fragments. Our method fine-tuned an existing object detection network named the Faster R-convolutional neural network (CNN) on this dataset with modification of the network’s anchor boxes. We also employed a novel temporal filtering method, which was demonstrated as an effective non-fragment filtering scheme in our recent previous image processing-based fragment detection approach, to capture only the first penetrating fragments from all detected fragments. We showed that the performance of the proposed method was comparable to that of a sensor-based system under the same experimental conditions. We also demonstrated that the use of deep learning technologies in the task of AFT significantly enhanced the performance via a quantitative comparison between our proposed method and our recent previous image processing-based method. In other words, our proposed method outperformed the previous image processing-based method. The proposed method produced outstanding results in terms of finding the exact fragment positions.