Efficient Object Detection in Images Using YOLO Algorithm: A Performance Evaluation

Object detection from UAV thermal infrared images and videos using YOLO models

The objective of this study is to examine two powerful components: the YOLO (You Only Look Once) framework for object recognition on edge devices and the MobileNet architecture. With the rising demand for real-time, efficient, and accurate object detection in constrained environments, these models offer distinct advantages suited to different applications. YOLO is renowned for its high accuracy and speed, making it ideal for complex detection tasks, whereas MobileNet is optimized for efficiency, enabling deployment on devices with limited computational resources. The paper discusses the evolution of these models, their architectural differences, and their respective strengths and limitations when implemented on edge devices. Furthermore, we explore the feasibility of integrating these frameworks into a hybrid model that leverages the lightweight feature extraction of MobileNet and the robust detection capabilities of YOLO. Such a hybrid approach could significantly enhance real-time object detection performance across a wide range of hardware platforms.  Researchers and practitioners seeking to deploy advanced object detection models in real-world applications, particularly where computational efficiency and accuracy are paramount may find this review as a valuable resource.

A challenging and attractive task in computer vision is underwater object detection. Although object detection techniques have achieved good performance in general datasets, problems of low visibility and color bias in the complex underwater environment have led to generally poor image quality; besides this, problems with small targets and target aggregation have led to less extractable information, which makes it difficult to achieve satisfactory results. In past research of underwater object detection based on deep learning, most studies have mainly focused on improving detection accuracy by using large networks; the problem of marine underwater lightweight object detection has rarely gotten attention, which has resulted in a large model size and slow detection speed; as such the application of object detection technologies under marine environments needs better real-time and lightweight performance. In view of this, a lightweight underwater object detection method based on the MobileNet v2, You Only Look Once (YOLO) v4 algorithm and attentional feature fusion has been proposed to address this problem, to produce a harmonious balance between accuracy and speediness for target detection in marine environments. In our work, a combination of MobileNet v2 and depth-wise separable convolution is proposed to reduce the number of model parameters and the size of the model. The Modified Attentional Feature Fusion (AFFM) module aims to better fuse semantic and scale-inconsistent features and to improve accuracy. Experiments indicate that the proposed method obtained a mean average precision (mAP) of 81.67% and 92.65% on the PASCAL VOC dataset and the brackish dataset, respectively, and reached a processing speed of 44.22 frame per second (FPS) on the brackish dataset. Moreover, the number of model parameters and the model size were compressed to 16.76% and 19.53% of YOLO v4, respectively, which achieved a good tradeoff between time and accuracy for underwater object detection.

Software was developed in Python for the digital processing of object images before their detection using the You Only Look Once (YOLO) artificial neural network. Detection was carried out on object images, specifically vehicles and other road users. The preprocessing of images was performed through histogram equalization and local contrast enhancement. The original images were read from video cameras or graphic files. Image detection was performed using the medium-sized YOLO convolutional neural network model, YOLOv8m. As a result of detection, the studied objects, particularly cars, were highlighted with rectangular bounding boxes. To evaluate the accuracy of object detection, several metrics (parameters) were used: Precision, Recall, Intersection over Union (IoU), F1, and Average Precision (AP). The YOLO network was pre-trained on the Common Objects in Context dataset. The YOLO neural network returns the object recognition confidence, the coordinates of its center (x, y) on the image, and its width and height (w, h). The detected objects are marked with rectangular bounding boxes. The positioning of objects in the images was manually performed using the Roboflow tool, which allows for accurate spatial positioning of each object. The study of the impact of image preprocessing on the accuracy of object detection by the YOLO network was conducted using a typical traffic scene image. After histogram equalization, the histogram becomes more symmetrical and uniform, improving the visual quality of both dark and bright areas. This led to improved object detection accuracy across almost all metrics. The increase in detection accuracy by the IoU parameter is 0.169. The summary improvement in detection accuracy by the IoU, F1, AP parameters is 0.502. It was shown that after image preprocessing, detection accuracy increased, and all vehicles were correctly detected. The developed software can be used in various computer vision systems as well as in Internet of Things systems for remote monitoring and control.

In this work, we present our intelligent SSD, SeeSSD , an energy-efficient computational SSD for a real-time object detection system. SeeSSD embeds an FPGA-based CNN processing engine and the firmware that performs the convolutional operation on the target image. SeeSSD processes the image data at the storage before sending it to the host. This reduces the amount of data transferred to the host and lowers the data movement overhead, thus reducing transfer time and saving power. By using our SeeSSD system and YOLO_Embed, an object detection neural network model, we are able to outperform the fastest YOLO model for an embedded controller, YOLO-Lite, in terms of performance, accuracy, and energy efficiency. YOLO (You Only Look Once) models are a series of one-stage object detection neural models that have become very popular due to their fast speed and high accuracy. The contribution of this work includes designing and implementing our SeeSSD system with a lightweight object detection model, YOLO_Embed, for reducing the data movement overhead, performing real-time inference, and lowering the overall power consumption. We implemented the entire software stack associated with the SeeSSD system; on-device CNN acceleration engine implemented on FPGA, object identification interface for SeeSSD using YOLO_Embed, and embedded software layer in SeeSSD for on-device convolutional processing. We calculated our YOLO_Embed model’s accuracy on object detection dataset benchmarks such as PASCAL VOC 2012, which came out to be 38.1% mAP (mean Accuracy Precision). Our system was able to perform inference in 0.21 seconds while reducing the power consumption by approximately 1.2 × and 1.4 × for CPU-Only and CPU+GPU systems, respectively. We were also able to reduce the data movement overhead by 24 × for a single target image.

Object detection is a critical component in intelligent surveillance, disaster response, and autonomous dronebased monitoring systems. In recent years, the You Only Look Once (YOLO) family of algorithms has transformed real-time object detection by achieving an effective balance between detection speed and accuracy. This review paper presents a comprehensive analysis of YOLO models from YOLOv1 to YOLOv8, emphasizing their architectural evolution, backbone development, and feature extraction strategies. Each version’s key innovations are discussed in detail—from YOLOv1’s unified detection framework and YOLOv2’s introduction of anchor boxes to YOLOv8’s advanced anchor-free detection mechanism. The comparative evaluation focuses on model accuracy (mAP), inference speed (FPS), and deployment feasibility for embedded and UAV-based systems. Findings from existing literature and experimental insights reveal that successive YOLO versions have progressively enhanced small object detection, robustness to scale variation, and computational efficiency. Overall, the study concludes that YOLOv8 currently achieves the most optimal trade-off between precision, speed, and resource utilization, establishing it as a leading framework for real-time aerial human detection and a promising foundation for future advancements in autonomous surveillance and rescue applications.

Object detection from deep learning has performed better in many applications, and yet real images usually depict challenges such as noise blurring or jitter rotation. Such problems generally degrade the accuracy and the efficiency of object detection systems dramatically. The purpose of this work is to identify objects satisfactorily by applying a method called You Only Look Once (YOLO), which tackles numerous problems while it provides plenty of advantages over other solutions.Unlike other algorithms that are known as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)or Fast-Convolutional Neural Networks, process images partially by focusing on specific areas. YOLO is different from that; it looks at an entire image at once while predicting bounding boxes and class probabilities for objects within these boxes by making a single forward pass of the network. This holistic approach makes YOLO significantly faster and much more efficient than other algorithms that process parts of the image separately.For this project, we have used the YOLO algorithm for detecting all types of objects in a real-time scenario. Moreover, an Android Application has been developed incorporating YOLO-based object detection for enhancing user experience. This application does not only detect objects in images or live video feeds but also provides voice feedback to the user. Such an enhancement would make the system much more accessible for individuals with visual impairments because they could receive immediate auditory information about the objects detected in their environment.

Abstract- With the rapid growth of urban populations and the increasing number of vehicles on the road, traffic congestion has become a significant problem in metropolitan areas. Conventional traffic control systems, which rely on pre-set signal timers, often fail to address real-time traffic conditions effectively, leading to inefficient traffic flow, increased fuel consumption, and environmental degradation. The paper “Smart Traffic Control System Based on Traffic Density Using YOLO” introduces a novel approach to address this issue by integrating artificial intelligence and computer vision into traffic management. The proposed system utilizes the YOLO (You Only Look Once) object detection algorithm to detect and classify vehicles in real-time from live video feeds captured at intersections. YOLO, known for its speed and accuracy in object detection tasks, calculates the vehicle density in each direction. Based on the detected density, the system dynamically adjusts the green light duration for each lane, ensuring that the direction with higher traffic receives longer green light periods. This method aims to optimize signal switching and minimize overall vehicle wait time. The paper outlines the complete architecture of the system, which includes modules for video input processing, vehicle detection using YOLO, traffic density computation, and adaptive signal timing control. By leveraging deep learning, the system enhances decision-making capabilities without relying on costly hardware like inductive loops or infrared sensors. This review evaluates the effectiveness and innovation of the proposed system, comparing it with traditional and sensor-based models. It highlights the advantages of using YOLO, such as real-time processing, high accuracy, and scalability. Additionally, the review discusses the system’s limitations, such as dependency on video clarity and environmental conditions, and proposes areas for future enhancement, including integration with cloud computing and edge AI for broader deployment. Keywords- Smart Traffic Control System, YOLO Object Detection, Traffic Density Estimation, Real-Time Traffic Monitoring, Adaptive Traffic Signal Control, Vehicle Classification ( Cars, Bikes, Buses, Trucks, Rikshaws), Intelligent Transportation System.

Object detection plays a crucial role in computer vision applications, ranging from autonomous vehicles to surveillance systems. One-stage object detectors have emerged as a powerful solution by simplifying detection pipelines, enabling real-time performance while maintaining competitive accuracy. This article provides a comprehensive survey of one-stage obj ect detection models, including you only look once (YOLO), single shot multibox detector (SSD), and PaddlePaddle YOLO (PP-YOLO) variants. A central question guides this exploration: How can incremental architectural refinements and training strategies improve the trade-off between speed, accuracy, and computational efficiency in object detection models for real-time applications? Through a detailed analysis of key innovations, performance metrics, and practical applications, this survey highlights the evolution of these models and their contributions to bridging the gap between research and deployment. Additionally, the paper identifies current challenges, such as small-object detection and resource efficiency, and proposes future research directions to advance the field further.

Object detection is a fundamental problem in computer vision that involves detecting and localizing objects within an image. In recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have become the state-of-the-art approach for object detection tasks. YOLO (You Only Look Once) is a popular real-time object detection system that uses a single CNN to predict the bounding boxes and class probabilities for objects in an image. In this paper, we present a human detection and counting system using YOLO. Our system is trained on a large dataset of annotated images and achieves high accuracy and real-time performance. We evaluate our system on a public dataset and demonstrate its effectiveness in various scenarios. This paper focuses on developing a system for human detection and counting using YOLOv4 and Flask API. The system aims to address the increasing importance of human detection and counting in various fields such as social distancing, crowd management, and surveillance.

Accurate object detection in underwater environments is severely challenged by light attenuation, wavelength-dependent color distortion, and scattering-induced turbidity, which create a substantial domain gap between terrestrial and underwater imagery. Conventional Generative Adversarial Network(GAN)-based translation models, such as CycleGAN, attempt to mitigate this gap but often suffer from instability and unrealistic color shifts due to their black-box design. To address these limitations, we propose JTA-GAN (Joint Turbidity–Attenuation GAN), a physics-informed generative framework that explicitly disentangles underwater image formation into scene radiance (J, derived from the physical imaging model), transmission (T), and ambient light (A). By enforcing a simplified physical imaging model within the generator architecture, JTA-GAN enables spatially coherent haze and attenuation synthesis without requiring ground-truth depth supervision. An asymmetric architecture stabilizes reverse mapping, while Learned Perceptual Image Patch Similarity(LPIPS)-based perceptual loss further improves reconstruction realism. Using the JTA-GAN network, we generated 65,153 physically plausible synthetic images for training You Only Look Once(YOLO)-based detectors. Evaluation on the SUIM benchmark demonstrates consistent performance improvements; specifically, YOLOv8s trained with synthetic data from JTA-GAN achieves 17.3% mAP(mean Average Precision), outperforming the land-only baseline (13.2%) and CycleGAN-based augmentation (10.8%). These results confirm that physics-informed generative modeling provides a theoretically grounded and effective solution for underwater domain adaptation under the high-turbidity and low-light conditions represented in the study.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is primarily disseminated through physical contact. As a precaution, it is recommended that indoor spaces have a limited number of people and at least one meter apart. This study proposes a real-time method for monitoring physical distancing compliance in indoor spaces using computer vision and deep learning techniques. The proposed method utilizes YOLO (You Only Look Once), a popular convolutional neural network-based object detection model, pre-trained on the Microsoft COCO (Common Objects in Context) dataset to detect persons and estimate their physical distance in real time. The effectiveness of the proposed method was assessed using metrics including accuracy rate, frame per second (FPS), and mean average precision (mAP). The results show that the YOLO v3 model had the most remarkable accuracy (87.07%) and mAP (89.91%). On the other hand, the highest fps rate of up to 18.71 was achieved by the YOLO v5s model. The results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method for effectively monitoring physical distancing compliance in indoor spaces, providing valuable insights for future use in other public health scenarios.

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has a special ability to detect objects in any climate and weather conditions. Consequently, SAR images are widely used in maritime transportation safety and fishery law enforcement for maritime object detection. Currently, deep-learning models are being extensively used for the detection of objects from images. Among them, the feature pyramid network (FPN) uses pyramids for representing semantic information regardless of the scale and has an improved accuracy of object detection. It is also suitable for the detection of multiple small ship objects in SAR images. This study aims to resolve the problems associated with small-object and multi-object ship detection in complex scenarios e.g., when a ship nears the port, by proposing a detection method based on an optimized FPN model. The feature pyramid model is first embedded in a traditional region proposal network (RPN) and mapped into a new feature space for object identification. Subsequently, the k-means clustering algorithm based on the shape similar distance (SSD) measure is used to optimize the FPN. Initial anchor boxes and tests are created using the SAR ship dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm for object detection shows an accuracy of 98.62%. Compared with Yolo, the RPN based on VGG/ResNet, FPN based on VGG/ResNet, and other models in complex scenarios, the proposed model shows a higher accuracy rate and better overall performance.

Object detection has become the cornerstone of various real-world applications, ranging from autonomous driving where it helps detect road objects to medical imaging for early disease prediction and gesture recognition systems. Due to their ability to operate continuously and cost-effectively, computer vision models are increasingly being employed in surveillance and monitoring tasks. Unlike humans, who can intuitively recognize and understand objects within images, machines require advanced algorithms to mimic such capabilities. A key challenge in computer vision lies in recognizing and tracking objects in real-time with accuracy and reliability. Human visual systems perform these tasks naturally and swiftly, enabling complex activities like driving. For computers to match such performance, efficient object detection models along with additional hardware such as sensors are essential. This study presents a comparative analysis of two popular deep learning-based object detection algorithms You Only Look Once (YOLO) and Faster Region-based Convolution Neural Network (Faster RCNN). Both models are evaluated based on their detection accuracy, speed, and performance in real-time scenarios. The paper aims to highlight the strengths and limitations of each model, offering insights into their suitability for different applications. The findings suggest that while both algorithms have their merits, the choice between them depends on the specific requirements of a task, such as the trade-off between detection speed and precision. Comparative study shows that Faster RCNN outperforms its accuracy compared with YOLO.

This paper provides a comprehensive study of the security of YOLO (You Only Look Once) model series for object detection, emphasizing their evolution, technical innovations, and performance across the COCO dataset. The robustness of YOLO models under adversarial attacks and image corruption, offering insights into their resilience and adaptability, is analyzed in depth. As real-time object detection plays an increasingly vital role in applications such as autonomous driving, security, and surveillance, this review aims to clarify the strengths and limitations of each YOLO iteration, serving as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners aiming to optimize model selection and deployment in dynamic, real-world environments. The results reveal that YOLOX models, particularly their large variants, exhibit superior robustness compared to other YOLO versions, maintaining higher accuracy under challenging conditions. Our findings serve as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners aiming to optimize YOLO models for dynamic and adversarial real-world environments while guiding future research toward developing more resilient object detection systems.