The success of deep learning techniques in the computer vision domain has
triggered a range of initial investigations into their utility for visual place
recognition, all using generic features from networks that were trained for
other types of recognition tasks. In this paper, we train, at large scale, two
CNN architectures for the specific place recognition task and employ a
multi-scale feature encoding method to generate condition- and
viewpoint-invariant features. To enable this training to occur, we have
developed a massive Specific PlacEs Dataset (SPED) with hundreds of examples of
place appearance change at thousands of different places, as opposed to the
semantic place type datasets currently available. This new dataset enables us
to set up a training regime that interprets place recognition as a
classification problem. We comprehensively evaluate our trained networks on
several challenging benchmark place recognition datasets and demonstrate that
they achieve an average 10% increase in performance over other place
recognition algorithms and pre-trained CNNs. By analyzing the network responses
and their differences from pre-trained networks, we provide insights into what
a network learns when training for place recognition, and what these results
signify for future research in this area.

该研究通过训练两个卷积神经网络 (CNN) 架构来实现特定位置识别任务，并采用多尺度特征编码方法生成具备不变性的特征。通过建立具有变化外观的特定场所数据集 (SPED)，该研究综合评估了所训练的网络，并证明相对于其他场所识别算法和预训练的 CNN，其性能平均提升了 10%。