API usage sample for object_detection {#pot_sample_object_detection_README}

This sample demonstrates the use of the Post-training Optimization Toolkit API to quantize an object detection model in the accuracy-aware mode. The MobileNetV1 FPN model from TensorFlow* for object detection task is used for this purpose. A custom DataLoader is created to load the COCO dataset for object detection task and the implementation of mAP COCO is used for the model evaluation.

How to prepare the data

To run this sample, you will need to download the validation part of the COCO. The images should be placed in a separate folder, which will be later referred as <IMAGES_DIR> and annotation file instances_val2017.json later referred as <ANNOTATION_FILE>.

How to Run the Sample

In the instructions below, the Post-Training Optimization Tool directory <POT_DIR> is referred to:

<ENV>/lib/python<version>/site-packages/ in the case of PyPI installation, where <ENV> is a Python* environment where OpenVINO is installed and <version> is a Python* version, e.g. 3.6.
<INSTALL_DIR>/deployment_tools/tools/post_training_optimization_toolkit in the case of OpenVINO distribution package. <INSTALL_DIR> is the directory where Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit is installed.

To get started, follow the Installation Guide.
Launch Model Downloader(@ref omz_tools_downloader) tool to download ssd_mobilenet_v1_fpn_coco model from the Open Model Zoo repository.
```
python3 ./downloader.py --name ssd_mobilenet_v1_fpn_coco
```
Launch Model Converter(@ref omz_tools_downloader) tool to generate Intermediate Representation (IR) files for the model:
```
python3 ./converter.py --name ssd_mobilenet_v1_fpn_coco --mo <PATH_TO_MODEL_OPTIMIZER>/mo.py
```

Launch the sample script:

python <POT_DIR>/compression/api/samples/object_detection/object_detection_sample.py -m <PATH_TO_IR_XML> -d <IMAGES_DIR> --annotation-path <ANNOTATION_FILE>

Optional: you can specify .bin file of IR directly using the -w, --weights options.