An Open-Source Tool for Classification Models in Resource-Constrained Hardware

TL;DR

This paper introduces EmbML, an open-source tool that develops efficient, accurate machine learning classifiers suitable for low-power, resource-constrained hardware used in smart sensors and environmental monitoring.

Contribution

EmbML provides a comprehensive pipeline for creating compact, accurate classifiers optimized for resource-limited devices, with detailed analysis and practical validation.

Findings

EmbML classifiers achieve high accuracy with low memory usage.

Compared to related tools, EmbML offers a diverse set of efficient classifiers.

Validated in a real-world smart sensor application for disease vector detection.

Abstract

Applications that need to sense, measure, and gather real-time information from the environment frequently face three main restrictions: power consumption, cost, and lack of infrastructure. Most of the challenges imposed by these limitations can be better addressed by embedding Machine Learning (ML) classifiers in the hardware that senses the environment, creating smart sensors able to interpret the low-level data stream. However, for this approach to be cost-effective, we need highly efficient classifiers suitable to execute in unresourceful hardware, such as low-power microcontrollers. In this paper, we present an open-source tool named EmbML - Embedded Machine Learning that implements a pipeline to develop classifiers for resource-constrained hardware. We describe its implementation details and provide a comprehensive analysis of its classifiers considering accuracy, classification time, and memory usage. Moreover, we compare the performance of its classifiers with classifiers produced by related tools to demonstrate that our tool provides a diverse set of classification algorithms that are both compact and accurate. Finally, we validate EmbML classifiers in a practical application of a smart sensor and trap for disease vector mosquitoes.