Achieving Rotation-Invariant Convolution via Non-Learnable Orientation Alignment Operators

Achieving rotational invariance in deep neural networks without data augmentation is a research hotspot. Intrinsic invariance enables features to capture targets’ inherent properties, enhancing deep learning performance in visual tasks. Based on various types of non-learnable operators, this paper proposes a comprehensive set of convolution operations that are natually invariant to arbitrary rotations. Unlike most prior methods, these rotation-invariant convolutions (RIConvs) have the same number of learnable parameters and a similar computational process as standard convolutions, making them interchangeable. Using the MNIST-Rot dataset, we validate their invariance across rotation angles and compare them with previous rotation-invariant CNNs, where two gradient-based RIConvs achieve state-of-the-art results. Then, we integrate RIConvs with classic CNN backbones and evaluate them on texture recognition, aircraft type recognition, and remote sensing image classification tasks. Results show that RIConvs significantly improve accuracy, particularly with limited training data, and enhance performance even with data augmentation.