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Simple Summary: In the sorting process of Chinese softshell turtles, it is necessary to classify them based on their weight and accurately identify their plastron and carapace. This process requires heavy manual labor and complex mechanical processing methods. To improve processing efficiency and reduce costs, this article introduces machine vision technology, and a new image processing method is proposed. This method can estimate the weight of Chinese softshell turtles and accurately locate the positions of their plastron and carapace. The automation level of aquaculture can be greatly enhanced, and hardware costs can be reduced through software optimization through this approach. With the rapid development of the turtle breeding industry in China, the demand for automated turtle sorting is increasing. The automatic sorting of Chinese softshell turtles mainly consists of three parts: visual recognition, weight prediction, and individual sorting. This paper focuses on two aspects, i.e., visual recognition and weight prediction, and a novel method for the object detection and weight prediction of Chinese softshell turtles is proposed. In the individual sorting process, computer vision technology is used to estimate the weight of Chinese softshell turtles and classify them by weight. For the visual recognition of the body parts of Chinese softshell turtles, a color space model is proposed in this paper to separate the turtles from the background effectively. By applying multiple linear regression analysis for modeling, the relationship between the weight and morphological parameters of Chinese softshell turtles is obtained, which can be used to estimate the weight of turtles well. An improved deep learning object detection network is used to extract the features of the plastron and carapace of the Chinese softshell turtles, achieving excellent detection results. The mAP of the improved network reached 96.23%, which can meet the requirements for the accurate identification of the body parts of Chinese softshell turtles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cooperative, connected, and automated mobility (CCAM) infrastructure plays a key role in understanding and enhancing the environmental perception of autonomous vehicles (AVs) driving in complex urban settings. However, the deployment of CCAM infrastructure necessitates the efficient selection of the computational processing layer and deployment of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models to achieve greater performance of AVs in complex urban environments. In this paper, we propose a computational framework and analyze the effectiveness of a custom-trained DL model (YOLOv8) when deployed in diverse devices and settings at the vehicle-edge-cloud-layered architecture. Our main focus is to understand the interplay and relationship between the DL model's accuracy and execution time during deployment at the layered framework. Therefore, we investigate the trade-offs between accuracy and time by the deployment process of the YOLOv8 model over each layer of the computational framework. We consider the CCAM infrastructures, i.e., sensory devices, computation, and communication at each layer. The findings reveal that the performance metrics results (e.g., 0.842 mAP@0.5) of deployed DL models remain consistent regardless of the device type across any layer of the framework. However, we observe that inference times for object detection tasks tend to decrease when the DL model is subjected to different environmental conditions. For instance, the Jetson AGX (non-GPU) outperforms the Raspberry Pi (non-GPU) by reducing inference time by 72%, whereas the Jetson AGX Xavier (GPU) outperforms the Jetson AGX ARMv8 (non-GPU) by reducing inference time by 90%. A complete average time comparison analysis for the transfer time, preprocess time, and total time of devices Apple M2 Max, Intel Xeon, Tesla T4, NVIDIA A100, Tesla V100, etc., is provided in the paper. Our findings direct the researchers and practitioners to select the most appropriate device type and environment for the deployment of DL models required for production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing the environmental perception of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in intelligent transportation systems requires computer vision technology to be effective in detecting objects and obstacles, particularly in adverse weather conditions. Adverse weather circumstances present serious difficulties for object-detecting systems, which are essential to contemporary safety procedures, infrastructure for monitoring, and intelligent transportation. AVs primarily depend on image processing algorithms that utilize a wide range of onboard visual sensors for guidance and decisionmaking. Ensuring the consistent identification of critical elements such as vehicles, pedestrians, and road lanes, even in adverse weather, is a paramount objective. This paper not only provides a comprehensive review of the literature on object detection (OD) under adverse weather conditions but also delves into the ever-evolving realm of the architecture of AVs, challenges for automated vehicles in adverse weather, the basic structure of OD, and explores the landscape of traditional and deep learning (DL) approaches for OD within the realm of AVs. These approaches are essential for advancing the capabilities of AVs in recognizing and responding to objects in their surroundings. This paper further investigates previous research that has employed both traditional and DL methodologies for the detection of vehicles, pedestrians, and road lanes, effectively linking these approaches with the evolving field of AVs. Moreover, this paper offers an in-depth analysis of the datasets commonly employed in AV research, with a specific focus on the detection of key elements in various environmental conditions, and then summarizes the evaluation matrix. We expect that this review paper will help scholars to gain a better understanding of this area of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical imaging and deep learning models are essential to the early identification and diagnosis of brain cancers, facilitating timely intervention and improving patient outcomes. This research paper investigates the integration of YOLOv5, a state-of-the-art object detection framework, with non-local neural networks (NLNNs) to improve brain tumor detection's robustness and accuracy. This study begins by curating a comprehensive dataset comprising brain MRI scans from various sources. To facilitate effective fusion, the YOLOv5 and NLNNs, K-means+, and spatial pyramid pooling fast+ (SPPF+) modules are integrated within a unified framework. The brain tumor dataset is used to refine the YOLOv5 model through the application of transfer learning techniques, adapting it specifically to the task of tumor detection. The results indicate that the combination of YOLOv5 and other modules results in enhanced detection capabilities in comparison to the utilization of YOLOv5 exclusively, proving recall rates of 86% and 83% respectively. Moreover, the research explores the interpretability aspect of the combined model. By visualizing the attention maps generated by the NLNNs module, the regions of interest associated with tumor presence are highlighted, aiding in the understanding and validation of the decision-making procedure of the methodology. Additionally, the impact of hyperparameters, such as NLNNs kernel size, fusion strategy, and training data augmentation, is investigated to optimize the performance of the combined model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Simple Summary: Pig tracking provides strong support for refined management in pig farms and can assist in realizing customized, automated, and intellectualized management. However, there are many complex factors in actual production that result in pigs not being tracked consistently over time. To address this issue, we proposed a long-term video tracking method for group-housed pigs based on improved StrongSORT. The experimental results proved that our study demonstrates high practicality, catering to the needs of practical production. It improved the efficiency of farming personnel and lays the foundation for the automated monitoring of pigs. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that we have also released a dataset specifically designed for long-term pig tracking in this paper. Pig tracking provides strong support for refined management in pig farms. However, long and continuous multi-pig tracking is still extremely challenging due to occlusion, distortion, and motion blurring in real farming scenarios. This study proposes a long-term video tracking method for group-housed pigs based on improved StrongSORT, which can significantly improve the performance of pig tracking in production scenarios. In addition, this research constructs a 24 h pig tracking video dataset, providing a basis for exploring the effectiveness of long-term tracking algorithms. For object detection, a lightweight pig detection network, YOLO v7-tiny_Pig, improved based on YOLO v7-tiny, is proposed to reduce model parameters and improve detection speed. To address the target association problem, the trajectory management method of StrongSORT is optimized according to the characteristics of the pig tracking task to reduce the tracking identity (ID) switching and improve the stability of the algorithm. The experimental results show that YOLO v7-tiny_Pig ensures detection applicability while reducing parameters by 36.7% compared to YOLO v7-tiny and achieving an average video detection speed of 435 frames per second. In terms of pig tracking, Higher-Order Tracking Accuracy (HOTA), Multi-Object Tracking Accuracy (MOTP), and Identification F1 (IDF1) scores reach 83.16%, 97.6%, and 91.42%, respectively. Compared with the original StrongSORT algorithm, HOTA and IDF1 are improved by 6.19% and 10.89%, respectively, and Identity Switch (IDSW) is reduced by 69%. Our algorithm can achieve the continuous tracking of pigs in real scenarios for up to 24 h. This method provides technical support for non-contact pig automatic monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection of objects on water surfaces is a pivotal technology for the perceptual systems of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). This paper proposes a novel real-time target detection system designed to address the challenges posed by indistinct bottom boundaries and foggy imagery. Our method enhances the YOLOv8s model by incorporating the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) and a self-attention mechanism, examining their impact at various integration points. A dynamic sample assignment strategy was introduced to enhance the precision of our model and accelerate its convergence. To address the challenge of delineating bottom boundaries with clarity, our model employs a two-strategy approach: a threshold filter and a feedforward neural network (FFN) that provides targeted guidance for refining these boundaries. Our model demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving a mean average precision (mAP) of 47.1% on the water surface object dataset, which represents a 1.7% increase over the baseline YOLOv8 model. The dynamic sample assignment strategy contributes a 1.0% improvement on average precision at the intersection over union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 (AP0.5), while the FFN strategy fine-tunes the bottom boundaries and achieves an additional 0.8% improvement in average precision at IoU threshold of 0.75 (AP0.75). Furthermore, ablation studies have validated the versatility of our approach, confirming its potential for integration into various detection frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: In response to the quantitative demand for the practical deployment of applications and the need to enhance the detection accuracy of wildlife in complex field environments in southwest China and neighboring regions, we have refined the wildlife detection algorithm based on re-parameterized convolution. This refinement is specifically targeted at addressing the challenges posed by the low quality of wildlife images captured by camera traps and the limitations of traditional object detection algorithms in feature extraction capability. To address these issues, we have introduced a series of improvement schemes. As a result of these enhancements, there has been a noteworthy improvement in both the accuracy of wildlife detection and the speed of model inference. This advancement offers a convenient and efficient method for the preliminary detection in the context of automated wildlife monitoring. To autonomously detect wildlife images captured by camera traps on a platform with limited resources and address challenges such as filtering out photos without optimal objects, as well as classifying and localizing species in photos with objects, we introduce a specialized wildlife object detector tailored for camera traps. This detector is developed using a dataset acquired by the Saola Working Group (SWG) through camera traps deployed in Vietnam and Laos. Utilizing the YOLOv6-N object detection algorithm as its foundation, the detector is enhanced by a tailored optimizer for improved model performance. We deliberately introduce asymmetric convolutional branches to enhance the feature characterization capability of the Backbone network. Additionally, we streamline the Neck and use CIoU loss to improve detection performance. For quantitative deployment, we refine the RepOptimizer to train a pure VGG-style network. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method empowers the model to achieve an 88.3% detection accuracy on the wildlife dataset in this paper. This accuracy is 3.1% higher than YOLOv6-N, and surpasses YOLOv7-T and YOLOv8-N by 5.5% and 2.8%, respectively. The model consistently maintains its detection performance even after quantization to the INT8 precision, achieving an inference speed of only 6.15 ms for a single image on the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX device. The improvements we introduce excel in tasks related to wildlife image recognition and object localization captured by camera traps, providing practical solutions to enhance wildlife monitoring and facilitate efficient data acquisition. Our current work represents a significant stride toward a fully automated animal observation system in real-time in-field applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildland fires negatively impact forest biodiversity and human lives. They also spread very rapidly. Early detection of smoke and fires plays a crucial role in improving the efficiency of firefighting operations. Deep learning techniques are used to detect fires and smoke. However, the different shapes, sizes, and colors of smoke and fires make their detection a challenging task. In this paper, recent YOLO-based algorithms are adopted and implemented for detecting and localizing smoke and wildfires within ground and aerial images. Notably, the YOLOv7x model achieved the best performance with an mAP (mean Average Precision) score of 80.40% and fast detection speed, outperforming the baseline models in detecting both smoke and wildfires. YOLOv8s obtained a high mAP of 98.10% in identifying and localizing only wildfire smoke. These models demonstrated their significant potential in handling challenging scenarios, including detecting small fire and smoke areas; varying fire and smoke features such as shape, size, and colors; the complexity of background, which can include diverse terrain, weather conditions, and vegetation; and addressing visual similarities among smoke, fog, and clouds and the the visual resemblances among fire, lighting, and sun glare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of machine learning and robotics brings promising potential to tackle the application challenges of mobile robot navigation in industries. The real-world environment is highly dynamic and unpredictable, with increasing necessities for efficiency and safety. This demands a multi-faceted approach that combines advanced sensing, robust obstacle detection, and avoidance mechanisms for an effective robot navigation experience. While hybrid methods with default robot operating system (ROS) navigation stack have demonstrated significant results, their performance in real time and highly dynamic environments remains a challenge. These environments are characterized by continuously changing conditions, which can impact the precision of obstacle detection systems and efficient avoidance control decision-making processes. In response to these challenges, this paper presents a novel solution that combines a rapidly exploring random tree (RRT)-integrated ROS navigation stack and a pre-trained YOLOv7 object detection model to enhance the capability of the developed work on the NAV-YOLO system. The proposed approach leveraged the high accuracy of YOLOv7 obstacle detection and the efficient path-planning capabilities of RRT and dynamic windows approach (DWA) to improve the navigation performance of mobile robots in real-world complex and dynamically changing settings. Extensive simulation and real-world robot platform experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution. The result demonstrated a high-level obstacle avoidance capability, ensuring the safety and efficiency of mobile robot navigation operations in aviation environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an amount estimation method for food intake based on both color and depth images. Two pairs of color and depth images are captured pre- and post-meals. The pre- and post-meal color images are employed to detect food types and food existence regions using Mask R-CNN. The post-meal color image is spatially transformed to match the food region locations between the pre- and post-meal color images. The same transformation is also performed on the post-meal depth image. The pixel values of the post-meal depth image are compensated to reflect 3D position changes caused by the image transformation. In both the pre- and post-meal depth images, a space volume for each food region is calculated by dividing the space between the food surfaces and the camera into multiple tetrahedra. The food intake amounts are estimated as the difference in space volumes calculated from the pre- and post-meal depth images. From the simulation results, we verify that the proposed method estimates the food intake amount with an error of up to 2.2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scoring targets in shooting sports is a crucial and time-consuming task that relies on manually counting bullet holes. This paper introduces an automatic score detection model using object detection techniques. The study contributes to the field of computer vision by comparing the performance of seven models (belonging to two different architectural setups) and by making the dataset publicly available. Another value-added aspect is the inclusion of three variants of the object detection model, YOLOv8, recently released in 2023 (at the time of writing). Five of the used models are single-shot detectors, while two belong to the two-shot detectors category. The dataset was manually captured from the shooting range and expanded by generating more versatile data using Python code. Before the dataset was trained to develop models, it was resized (640 × 640) and augmented using Roboflow API. The trained models were then assessed on the test dataset, and their performance was compared using matrices like mAP50, mAP50-90, precision, and recall. The results showed that YOLOv8 models can detect multiple objects with good confidence scores. Among these models, YOLOv8m performed the best, with the highest mAP50 value of 96.7%, followed by the performance of YOLOv8s with the mAP50 value of 96.5%. It is suggested that if the system is to be implemented in a real-time environment, YOLOv8s is a better choice since it took significantly less inference time (2.3 ms) than YOLOv8m (5.7 ms) and yet generated a competitive mAP50 of 96.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a practical contamination detection system for camera lenses using image analysis with deep learning. The proposed system can detect contamination in camera digital images through contamination learning utilizing deep learning, and it aims to prevent performance degradation of intelligent vision systems due to lens contamination in cameras. This system is based on the object detection algorithm YOLO (v5n, v5s, v5m, v5l, and v5x), which is trained with 4000 images captured under different lighting and background conditions. The trained models showed that the average precision improves as the algorithm size increases, especially for YOLOv5x, which showed excellent efficiency in detecting droplet contamination within 23 ms. They also achieved an average precision (mAP@0.5) of 87.46%, recall (mAP@0.5:0.95) of 51.90%, precision of 90.28%, recall of 81.47%, and F1 score of 85.64%. As a proof of concept, we demonstrated the identification and removal of contamination on camera lenses by integrating a contamination detection system and a transparent heater-based cleaning system. The proposed system is anticipated to be applied to autonomous driving systems, public safety surveillance cameras, environmental monitoring drones, etc., to increase operational safety and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In substation lightning rod meter reading data taking, the classical object detection model is not suitable for deployment in substation monitoring hardware devices due to its large size, large number of parameters, and slow detection speed, while is difficult to balance detection accuracy and real-time requirements with the existing lightweight object detection model. To address this problem, this paper constructs a lightweight object detection algorithm, YOLOv5-Meter Reading Lighting (YOLOv5-MRL), based on the improved YOLOv5 model's speed while maintaining accuracy. Then, the YOLOv5s are pruned based on the convolutional kernel channel soft pruning algorithm, which greatly reduces the number of parameters in the YOLOv5-MRL model while maintaining a certain accuracy loss. Finally, in order to facilitate the dial reading, the dial external circle fitting method is proposed to calculate the dial reading using the circular angle algorithm. The experimental results on the self-built dataset show that the YOLOv5-MRL object detection model achieves a mean average precision of 96.9%, a detection speed of 5 ms/frame, and a model weight size of 5.5 MB, making it better than other advanced dial reading models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting parcels accurately and efficiently has always been a challenging task when unloading from trucks onto conveyor belts because of the diverse and complex ways in which parcels are stacked. Conventional methods struggle to quickly and accurately classify the various shapes and surface patterns of unordered parcels. In this paper, we propose a parcel-picking surface detection method based on deep learning and image processing for the efficient unloading of diverse and unordered parcels. Our goal is to develop a systematic image processing algorithm that emphasises the boundaries of parcels regardless of their shape, pattern, or layout. The core of the algorithm is the utilisation of RGB-D technology for detecting the primary boundary lines regardless of obstacles such as adhesive labels, tapes, or parcel surface patterns. For cases where detecting the boundary lines is difficult owing to narrow gaps between parcels, we propose using deep learning-based boundary line detection through the You Only Look at Coefficients (YOLACT) model. Using image segmentation techniques, the algorithm efficiently predicts boundary lines, enabling the accurate detection of irregularly sized parcels with complex surface patterns. Furthermore, even for rotated parcels, we can extract their edges through complex mathematical operations using the depth values of the specified position, enabling the detection of the wider surfaces of the rotated parcels. Finally, we validate the accuracy and real-time performance of our proposed method through various case studies, achieving mAP (50) values of 93.8% and 90.8% for randomly sized and rotationally covered boxes with diverse colours and patterns, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of learning-based navigation for mobile robots is experiencing a surge of interest from research and industry sectors. The application of this technology for visual aircraft inspection tasks within a maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) hangar necessitates efficient perception and obstacle avoidance capabilities to ensure a reliable navigation experience. The present reliance on manual labour, static processes, and outdated technologies limits operation efficiency in the inherently dynamic and increasingly complex nature of the real-world hangar environment. The challenging environment limits the practical application of conventional methods and real-time adaptability to changes. In response to these challenges, recent years research efforts have witnessed advancement with machine learning integration aimed at enhancing navigational capability in both static and dynamic scenarios. However, most of these studies have not been specific to the MRO hangar environment, but related challenges have been addressed, and applicable solutions have been developed. This paper provides a comprehensive review of learning-based strategies with an emphasis on advancements in deep learning, object detection, and the integration of multiple approaches to create hybrid systems. The review delineates the application of learning-based methodologies to real-time navigational tasks, encompassing environment perception, obstacle detection, avoidance, and path planning through the use of vision-based sensors. The concluding section addresses the prevailing challenges and prospective development directions in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vehicle detection algorithm is an indispensable component of intelligent traffic management and control systems, influencing the efficiency and functionality of the system. In this paper, we propose a lightweight improvement method for the YOLOv5 algorithm based on integrated perceptual attention, with few parameters and high detection accuracy. First, we propose a lightweight module IPA with a Transformer encoder based on integrated perceptual attention, which leads to a reduction in the number of parameters while capturing global dependencies for richer contextual information. Second, we propose a lightweight and efficient multiscale spatial channel reconstruction (MSCCR) module that does not increase parameter and computational complexity and facilitates representative feature learning. Finally, we incorporate the IPA module and the MSCCR module into the YOLOv5s backbone network to reduce model parameters and improve accuracy. The test results show that, compared with the original model, the model parameters decrease by about 9%, the average accuracy (mAP@50) increases by 3.1%, and the FLOPS does not increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the complex imaging mechanism of SAR images and the lack of multi-angle and multi-parameter real scene SAR target data, the generalization performance of existing deep-learning-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image target detection methods are extremely limited. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised domain-adaptive SAR ship detection method based on cross-domain feature interaction and data contribution balance. First, we designed a new cross-domain image generation module called CycleGAN-SCA to narrow the gap between the source domain and the target domain. Second, to alleviate the influence of complex backgrounds on ship detection, a new backbone using a self-attention mechanism to tap the potential of feature representation was designed. Furthermore, aiming at the problems of low resolution, few features and easy information loss of small ships, a new lightweight feature fusion and feature enhancement neck was designed. Finally, to balance the influence of different quality samples on the model, a simple and efficient E 1 2 I o U Loss was constructed. Experimental results based on a self-built large-scale optical-SAR cross-domain target detection dataset show that compared with existing cross-domain methods, our method achieved optimal performance, with the mAP reaching 68.54%. Furthermore, our method achieved a 6.27% improvement compared to the baseline, even with only 5% of the target domain labeled data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the large volume of remote sensing images collected daily, automatic object detection and segmentation have been a consistent need in Earth observation (EO). However, objects of interest vary in shape, size, appearance, and reflecting properties. This is not only reflected by the fact that these objects exhibit differences due to their geographical diversity but also by the fact that these objects appear differently in images collected from different sensors (optical and radar) and platforms (satellite, aerial, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)). Although there exists a plethora of object detection methods in the area of remote sensing, given the very fast development of prevalent deep learning methods, there is still a lack of recent updates for object detection methods. In this paper, we aim to provide an update that informs researchers about the recent development of object detection methods and their close sibling in the deep learning era, instance segmentation. The integration of these methods will cover approaches to data at different scales and modalities, such as optical, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, and digital surface models (DSM). Specific emphasis will be placed on approaches addressing data and label limitations in this deep learning era. Further, we survey examples of remote sensing applications that benefited from automatic object detection and discuss future trends of the automatic object detection in EO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of object detection technology for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), it is convenient to collect data from UAV aerial photographs. They have a wide range of applications in several fields, such as monitoring, geological exploration, precision agriculture, and disaster early warning. In recent years, many methods based on artificial intelligence have been proposed for UAV object detection, and deep learning is a key area in this field. Significant progress has been achieved in the area of deep-learning-based UAV object detection. Thus, this paper presents a review of recent research on deep-learning-based UAV object detection. This survey provides an overview of the development of UAVs and summarizes the deep-learning-based methods in object detection for UAVs. In addition, the key issues in UAV object detection are analyzed, such as small object detection, object detection under complex backgrounds, object rotation, scale change, and category imbalance problems. Then, some representative solutions based on deep learning for these issues are summarized. Finally, future research directions in the field of UAV object detection are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]