Learning Visual-Semantic Hierarchical Attribute Space for Interpretable Open-Set Recognition

Zhuo Xu, Xiang Xiang; Proceedings of the Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2025, pp. 5697-5706

In the field of open-set recognition conventional models often focus on addressing challenges within a single hierarchical category and these methods frequently lack interpretability. In this paper we propose a novel solution that utilizes attributes and hierarchical relationships to achieve interpretable open-set recognition. Our method is centered around the visual-semantic attribute space. By leveraging hierarchy division we can decompose the attributes into more granular components thereby yielding additional performance improvements. When confronted with an unfamiliar object our method not only classifies it as an unknown category but also provides insights into the broader category and its associated attributes. This capability enhances interpretability by offering valuable information regarding the potential category and characteristics of the object. Experimental results demonstrate great performance improvements compared to existing methods.