Fruit Image Classification Model Based on MobileNetV2 with Deep Transfer Learning Technique

Due to the rapid emergence and evolution of AI applications, the utilization of smart imaging devices has increased significantly. Researchers have started using deep learning models, such as CNN, for image classification. Unlike the traditional models, which require a lot of features to perform well, CNN does not require any handcrafted features to perform well. It uses numerous filters, which extract required features from images automatically for classification. One of the issues in the horticulture industry is fruit classification, which requires an expert with a lot of experience. To overcome this issue an automated system is required which can classify different types of fruits without the need for any human effort. In this study, a dataset of a total of 26,149 images of 40 different types of fruits was used for experimentation. The training and test set were randomly recreated and divided into the ratio of 3:1. The experiment introduces a customized head of five different layers into MobileNetV2 architecture. The classification layer of the MobileNetV2 model is replaced by the customized head, which produced the modified version of MobileNetV2 called TL-MobileNetV2. In addition, transfer learning is used to retain the pre-trained model. TL-MobileNetV2 achieves an accuracy of 99%, which is 3% higher than MobileNetV2, and the equal error rate of TL-MobileNetV2 is just 1%. Compared to AlexNet, VGG16, InceptionV3, and ResNet, the accuracy is better by 8, 11, 6, and 10%, respectively. Furthermore, the TL-MobileNetV2 model obtained 99% precision, 99% for recall, and a 99% F1-score. It can be concluded that transfer learning plays a big part in achieving better results, and the dropout technique helps to reduce the overfitting in transfer learning.