Is it possible to host an object detection model on cloud, generate inference and retrieve results back to Android app
Having a cloud endpoint to take a picture from your android app as input and give back inference results to the phone is what you are looking for. Amazon and Google cloud solutions let you run inference for each api call you make and they charge you for each api call.
Context
Hey I am developing an android app that can detect objects of 5 classes. I used SSD mobilenet architecture for transfer learning to train the model on my own dataset. In the python code I was able to generate the inference quite well but when it came to integrating the model with app, everything went to hell and I failed miserably.
Strategy
So in order to use the model, I came up with an idea to host the model on a cloud server and whenever I take an image from android app camera, It sends the image to the cloud, performs the inference and returns the result back to android app.
Research done so far...
So far I have researched about REST APIs, specifically Retrofit which help communication b/w client and server using HTTP protocol. Its CRUD architecture and the GET, POST, PUT and DELETE methods.
Main Question
So before I get lost and fail miserably again like I did with trying to integrate tflite with android, I need a solid answer that if it is even possible, and if it is guide me in the right direction so that I don't get stuck again. basically I just need to understand the steps involved in this approach.
Your help will be greatly appreciated.