SPTD-YOLO: Small-Object-Aware Pyramidal and Task-Aligned Dynamic YOLO for UAV Small Object Detection
Source abstract
Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) object detection plays an essential role in modern visual perception, but it remains challenging because UAV imagery typically contains extremely small, densely distributed objects embedded in complex backgrounds. Conventional detectors, including the recent YOLOv12, are prone to losing critical spatial details during downsampling and often exhibit task misalignment between classification and localization, particularly under severe scale variations. To address these problems, this study proposes SPTD-YOLO, a small-object-aware pyramidal and task-aligned dynamic detector. Specifically, a Small Object Enhanced Pyramid (SOEP) is developed by incorporating SPDConv and CSPOmniKernel to preserve and refine shallow, fine-grained features. In addition, a high-resolution P2 detection layer is introduced to increase spatial grid density and strengthen the structural representation of tiny objects. Furthermore, a Task-Aligned Dynamic Detection Head (TADDH) is designed to decouple and coordinate classification and regression through dynamic convolution and a synergistic dual-gating mechanism. Experiments on VisDrone2019 show that SPTD-YOLO improves mAP@0.5 by 8.37% and mAP@0.5:0.95 by 5.11% over YOLOv12 while maintaining practical efficiency for UAV edge deployment.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Advanced Neural Network Applications · UAV Applications and Optimization · Video Surveillance and Tracking Methods
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long N°S 100–460, Taipa, Macau, China
Department of Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuyi University, Jiangmen 529020, China
Funding
The Science and Technology Development Fund of Macau · The Wuyi University Hong Kong Macao Joint Research and Development Fund
References (66)
Show source-provided references
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