Robust Object Detection Model for UAV Application

Not only common issues on object detection task need to be deal with, for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications, small object is one of the critical problems that needs to be solved. YOLOv7 is a powerful network architecture that provides high efficiency and accuracy object detection results. This paper adopts YOLOv7 as an object detection model for two different kinds of targets, one is vehicle, and the other is ocean flotsam. By training the model with open datasets and fine-tuning the model with self-collected datasets, we prove through sequences collected from real-world scenarios that YOLOv7 is able to provide robust and accurate object detection results, including vehicles and ocean flotsam, with real-time efficiency. Based on such experimental result, we confirmed that YOLOv7 can be the baseline for object detection model development.