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This research presents a novel forward-only test-time adaptation technique specifically designed for integer-only convolutional networks running on microcontrollers, addressing the unique constraints of edge deployment where backpropagation is unavailable. By re-normalizing folded convolution outputs using only forward-pass estimates, the method achieves significant accuracy recovery with minimal energy overhead (8.3 mJ) on real hardware like the ESP32-S3. This advancement enables robust field adaptation for resource-constrained vision models without requiring complex inference runtimes or gradient-based training.
FORGE: Forward-Only Test-Time Adaptation for Integer-Only Vision Models on Microcontrollers
arXiv:2609.01683v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision models deployed on microcontrollers (MCUs) are quantized to integer-only arithmetic and run in inference-only runtimes that do not carry the machinery backpropagation needs: the standard tool for adapting a model to the distribution shift (sensor noise, blur, lighting) it meets in the field. Existing forward-only test-time adaptation (TTA) methods either run only on server- or edge-GPU-class models (not true microcontroller integer execution), or require the batch-normalization (BN) layers that integer deployment fuses away. We present a forward-only TTA method that operates on deployed, BN-folded, integer-only convolutional networks. The key observation is that fusing BN into the preceding convolution, a mandatory step for integer inference, destroys the statistics that normalization-based adaptation relies on. We restore adaptation by re-normalizing each folded convolution's per-channel output to its clean training statistics, using only forward-pass estimates. The method (i) recovers most of gradient-based TENT's accuracy gain (+20.9 vs. +24.9 points) and matches forward-only BN adaptation, while being the only method that runs on a folded integer-only model; (ii) needs to adapt only 3 of 21 layers (selected without seeing the test corruptions) to recover 93% of the benefit; (iii) survives single-sample streaming with a batch-size-scaled momentum; and (iv) generalizes across three datasets (up to 200 classes) and two architectures. We validate bit-exact int8 convolution execution and deploy on an ESP32-S3, where, measured with a Nordic PPK2 power profiler, the forward-only adaptation (a lightweight fp32 recalibration around the int8 convolutions) costs only 8.3 mJ (6.8% of inference energy) and 21.9 ms on the deployed SIMD-optimized model: forward-only adaptation is cheap on a real microcontroller.
Abstract:Vision models deployed on microcontrollers (MCUs) are quantized to integer-only arithmetic and run in inference-only runtimes that do not carry the machinery backpropagation needs: the standard tool for adapting a model to the distribution shift (sensor noise, blur, lighting) it meets in the field. Existing forward-only test-time adaptation (TTA) methods either run only on server- or edge-GPU-class models (not true microcontroller integer execution), or require the batch-normalization (BN) layers that integer deployment fuses away. We present a forward-only TTA method that operates on deployed, BN-folded, integer-only convolutional networks. The key observation is that fusing BN into the preceding convolution, a mandatory step for integer inference, destroys the statistics that normalization-based adaptation relies on. We restore adaptation by re-normalizing each folded convolution's per-channel output to its clean training statistics, using only forward-pass estimates. The method (i) recovers most of gradient-based TENT's accuracy gain (+20.9 vs. +24.9 points) and matches forward-only BN adaptation, while being the only method that runs on a folded integer-only model; (ii) needs to adapt only 3 of 21 layers (selected without seeing the test corruptions) to recover 93% of the benefit; (iii) survives single-sample streaming with a batch-size-scaled momentum; and (iv) generalizes across three datasets (up to 200 classes) and two architectures. We validate bit-exact int8 convolution execution and deploy on an ESP32-S3, where, measured with a Nordic PPK2 power profiler, the forward-only adaptation (a lightweight fp32 recalibration around the int8 convolutions) costs only 8.3 mJ (6.8% of inference energy) and 21.9 ms on the deployed SIMD-optimized model: forward-only adaptation is cheap on a real microcontroller.
16 pages, 5 figures, 9 tables. Published in Transactions on Machine Learning Research (2026). OpenReview: this https URL. Code and checkpoints: this https URL
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Hardware Architecture (cs.AR); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
I.2.6; I.5.4; C.3
arXiv:2609.01683 [cs.CV]
(or arXiv:2609.01683v1 [cs.CV] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.01683 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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