The present invention relates to a zero-
sample classification technology in the
computer vision field, in particular, a variational automatic
encoder-based zero-
sample image classification method. Asto the zero-
sample image classification method, the distribution of the mappings of semantic features and visual features of categories in a
semantic space is fitted, and more efficient semantic associations between the visual features and category
semantics are built. According to the variational automatic
encoder-based zero-
sample image classification method, a variational automatic
encoder is adopted to generate embedded semantic features on the basis of the visual features; it is regarded that the variational automatic encoder has a
latent variable Z<^>; the
latent variable Z<^> is adoptedas an embedded
semantic feature; as for a zero-sample image classification task and the visual feature xj of a category-unknown sample, the encoding network of the variational automatic encoder whichis trained on visual categories is utilized to calculate a
latent variable Z<^>j which is generated through encoding; the latent variable Z<^>j is adopted as an embedded
semantic feature, cosine distances between the latent variable Z<^>j and the
semantic feature of each invisible category are calculated, wherein the semantic feature of each invisible category is represented by a symbol describedin the descriptions of the invention; and a category of which the semantic feature is separated from the latent variable Z<^>j by the smallest distance is regarded as the category of the vision sample. The method of the present invention is mainly applied to video classification conditions.