Create a TensorFlow Lite file

TensorFlow Lite is a runtime platform used to run TensorFlow models on mobile and embedded devices.

In this guide, we use a Guild project to implement a simple workflow for generating an object detector that can be deployed on iPhone and Android devices.

Requirements

• Install Guild AI
• Sample object detector project from Create an object detector

Verify sample object detector project

Follow the steps in Create an object detector to create a Guild AI project containing an object detector.

Verify each of the steps below.

PROJECT environment variable

Confirm that the PROJECT environment variable is set to the sample project directory:

echo $PROJECT

If PROJECT is not defined, set it to the sample project location:

set PROJECT=<location of sample object detector project>

Replace <location of sample object detector project> with the full path to the sample project from Create an object detector.

Activate and verify project environment

Change to the project directory:

cd $PROJECT

Activate the environment:

source guild-env

If you see the message Guild environment ./env does not exist, revisit the steps in Initialize a project environment.

Use guild check to verify the environment:

guild check

Confirm that the value for guild_home is in the project directory under env/.guild.

List available project operations

From the project directory, list operations by running:

guild ops

Guild should display the available operations for the object detector:

./detector:detect             Detect images using a trained detector
./detector:evaluate           Evaluate a trained detector
./detector:export-and-freeze  Export a detection graph with checkpoint weights
./detector:prepare            Prepare images annotated using Pascal VOC format
./detector:train              Train detector from scratch
./detector:transfer-learn     Train detector using transfer learning

If you see a different list of operations, verify the project Guild file (guild.yml in the project directory) is:

- model: detector
  description: Sample object detector
  extends:
    - gpkg.object-detect/voc-annotated-images-directory-support
    - gpkg.object-detect/ssd-mobilenet-v2

If you receive an error message, verify that the project environment is active (see above) and that gpkg.object‑detect is installed. To view the list of installed Guild packages, run:

guild packages

If gpkg.object‑detect is not shown in the list, install it by running:

guild install gpkg.object-detect

Install gpkg.tflite

The modifications we make below require a new Guild package, gpkg.tflite, which provides support for TensorFlow Lite.

Verify that the project is environment is activated (see above) and install gpkg.tflite by running:

guild install gpkg.tflite

Add TensorFlow Lite support

In this section, we add support to our object detector for generating a tflite file.

Modify guild.yml to be:

- model: detector
  description: Sample object detector
  extends:
    - gpkg.object-detect/voc-annotated-images-directory-support
    - gpkg.object-detect/ssd-mobilenet-v2
    - gpkg.tflite/tflite-support

This adds tflite‑support to the list of model extensions. By including tflite‑support we inherit a new operation, tflite, which is used to generate a TensorFlow Lite file from a frozen inference graph.

Save you changes to guild.yml.

Verify that the detector now has the tflite operation by running:

guild ops tflite

Guild should show the new operation:

./detector:tflite  Generate a TFLite file from a frozen graph

Modify export‑and‑freeze to support tflite

To generated a tflite file, we need to make a change to the export‑and‑freeze operation. The exported graph needs additional operations to support TensorFlow Lite.

The export support in gpkg.object‑detect supports this by way of a tflite flags, which, when set to yes, causes the exported graph to include the required operations.

Let’s modify our model definition so that this behavior is enabled by default.

Modify guild.yml to be:

- model: detector
  description: Sample object detector
  extends:
    - gpkg.object-detect/voc-annotated-images-directory-support
    - gpkg.object-detect/ssd-mobilenet-v2
    - gpkg.tflite/tflite-support
  operations:
    export-and-freeze:
      flags:
        tflite: yes

This change modifies the default value of the tflite flag to yes. The rest of the configuration for the export‑and‑freeze operation remains unmodified.

Save you changes to guild.yml.

You can verify the new default value by running:

guild run export-and-freeze --help-op

The ‑‑help‑op option tells Guild to show operation help without running the operation. You can use this option whenever you have a question about an operation’s use and its supported flags.

Note the definition of the tflite flag:

tflite  Whether or not to export graph with support for TensorFlow Lite (yes)

The default value is listed in parentheses as yes.

Verify a trained model

To generate a tflite file, you must first train a detector. If you have not already run the transfer‑learn operation, revisit Train a detector using transfer learning before continuing.

Verify that you have a trained model by running:

guild ls -o transfer-learn

If you see No matching runs, train a detector before continuing.

Generate a tflite compatible graph

Use export‑and‑freeze to generate a frozen inference graph that supports TensorFlow Lite:

guild run export-and-freeze

Note that tflite is yes (the new default value) and press Enter to confirm.

Guild generates a frozen inference graph. You can verify the graph files generated by running:

guild ls -p graph

Guild shows:

graph/
graph/frozen_inference_graph.pb
graph/tflite_graph.pb
graph/tflite_graph.pbtxt

Generate a tflite file

Now that we have a frozen inference graph that supports tflite, we can run the tflite operation:

guild run tflite

Press Enter to confirm.

Guild generates a tflite file.

View the run files:

guild ls

Guild shows the files:

frozen_inference_graph.pb
model.tflite

You can deploy the tflite file by copying it from the run directory. To get the full path of the tflite file, use:

guild ls -f -p model.tflite

The use of ‑f tells Guild to show the full path to the file.

Summary

In this guide, we modified the object detector project that we created in the Create an object detector to support TensorFlow Lite. Specifically, we made the following changes:

• Extend gpkg.tflite/tflite‑support to inherit the tflite operation, which is run to generate a tflite file.

• Redefine tflite flag of export‑and‑freeze operation.

With these changes, we can generate a tflite file for our object detector using this sequence of operations:

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