A Hybrid Neural Architecture Search Algorithm Optimized via Lifespan Particle Swarm Optimization for Coal Mine Image Recognition

Coal mine scene image recognition plays an important role in safety monitoring and equipment detection. However, traditional methods often depend on manually designed neural network architectures. These models struggle to handle the complex backgrounds, low illumination, and diverse objects commonly found in coal mine environments. Manual designs are not only inefficient but also restrict the exploration of optimal architectures, resulting to subpar performance. To address these challenges, we propose using a neural architecture search (NAS) to automate the design of neural networks. Traditional NAS methods are known to be computationally expensive. To improve this, we enhance the process by incorporating Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), a scalable algorithm that effectively balances global and local searches. To further enhance PSO’s efficiency, we integrate the lifespan mechanism, which prevents premature convergence and enables a more comprehensive exploration of the search space. Our proposed method establishes a flexible search space that includes various types of convolutional layers, activation functions, pooling operations, and network depths, enabling a comprehensive optimization process. Extensive experiments show that the Lifespan-PSO NAS method outperforms traditional manually designed networks and standard PSO-based NAS approaches, offering significant improvements in both recognition accuracy (improved by 10%) and computational efficiency (resource usage reduced by 30%). This makes it a highly effective solution for real-world coal mine image recognition tasks via a PSO-optimized approach in terms of performance and efficiency.