I had this idea of training for example a CNN on images, and having output branches at several of its intermediate layers. The early layers' output branch might then predict high-level class of detected objects (supposedly able to do this because less info is needed for a high-level classification than a very specialised one), and the later layers giving more detailed labels of the sub-class of the earlier high level class.
I have been searching for research on this type of setup but couldn't really find anything. Is there a name for this idea, or is this an open question/idea?