T-norm Selection for Object Detection in Autonomous Driving with Logical Constraints

Integrating logical constraints into object detection models for autonomous driving (AD) is a promising way to enhance their compliance to rules and thus increase the safety of the system. In this, t-norms have been utilized to calculate the constrained loss, i.e., the violations of logical constraints as losses. While prior works have statically selected few t-norms, we conduct an extensive experimental study to identify the most effective choices, as suboptimal t-norms can lead to undesired model behavior. For this, we present MOD-ECL, a neurosymbolic framework that implements a wide range of t-norms and can use them in an adaptive manner, with an algorithm that selects well-performing t-norms during training and a scheduler that regulates the impact of the constrained loss. We evaluate its effectiveness on the ROAD-R and ROAD-Waymo-R datasets for object detection in AD with attached common-sense constraints. Our results show that careful selection of parameters is crucial for good behavior of the constrained loss and that our framework allows us to obtain not only lower constraint violation but in some cases also an increase in detection performance. Furthermore, our methods allow fine control over the tradeoff between accuracy and violation.1