Maritime Small Object Detection from UAVs using Deep Learning with Altitude-Aware Dynamic Tiling

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ahmed, Sakib, Pizarro, Oscar
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Ahmed, Sakib
Pizarro, Oscar
author_facet Ahmed, Sakib
Pizarro, Oscar
contents Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are crucial in Search and Rescue (SAR) missions due to their ability to monitor vast maritime areas. However, small objects often remain difficult to detect from high altitudes due to low object-to-background pixel ratios. We propose an altitude-aware dynamic tiling method that scales and adaptively subdivides the image into tiles for enhanced small object detection. By integrating altitude-dependent scaling with an adaptive tiling factor, we reduce unnecessary computation while maintaining detection performance. Tested on the SeaDronesSee dataset [1] with YOLOv5 [2] and Slicing Aided Hyper Inference (SAHI) framework [3], our approach improves Mean Average Precision (mAP) for small objects by 38% compared to a baseline and achieves more than double the inference speed compared to static tiling. This approach enables more efficient and accurate UAV-based SAR operations under diverse conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_19728
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Maritime Small Object Detection from UAVs using Deep Learning with Altitude-Aware Dynamic Tiling
Ahmed, Sakib
Pizarro, Oscar
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are crucial in Search and Rescue (SAR) missions due to their ability to monitor vast maritime areas. However, small objects often remain difficult to detect from high altitudes due to low object-to-background pixel ratios. We propose an altitude-aware dynamic tiling method that scales and adaptively subdivides the image into tiles for enhanced small object detection. By integrating altitude-dependent scaling with an adaptive tiling factor, we reduce unnecessary computation while maintaining detection performance. Tested on the SeaDronesSee dataset [1] with YOLOv5 [2] and Slicing Aided Hyper Inference (SAHI) framework [3], our approach improves Mean Average Precision (mAP) for small objects by 38% compared to a baseline and achieves more than double the inference speed compared to static tiling. This approach enables more efficient and accurate UAV-based SAR operations under diverse conditions.
title Maritime Small Object Detection from UAVs using Deep Learning with Altitude-Aware Dynamic Tiling
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19728