SkySeg: Collaborative Onboard Semantic Segmentation with Heterogeneous UAVs in the Wild

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Main Authors: Lu, Anqi, Cheng, Yun, Hu, Youbing, Cao, Zhiqiang, Liu, Jie, Li, Zhijun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Lu, Anqi
Cheng, Yun
Hu, Youbing
Cao, Zhiqiang
Liu, Jie
Li, Zhijun
author_facet Lu, Anqi
Cheng, Yun
Hu, Youbing
Cao, Zhiqiang
Liu, Jie
Li, Zhijun
contents The demand for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based image acquisition and analysis has surged, with UAVs increasingly utilized for semantic segmentation tasks. To meet the real-time analysis requirements of UAV remote sensing missions, performing onboard computation and making decisions based on the results is a natural approach. However, deploying semantic segmentation on resource-constrained UAV platforms presents two significant challenges: 1) hardware constraints limit the ability of UAVs to perform real-time semantic segmentation, and 2) environmental variations during flight cause data distribution shifts, deviating from the original training data. To address these issues, this paper introduces SkySeg, a heterogeneous multi-UAV air-air cooperation framework that integrates computer vision and flight pattern to enable onboard semantic segmentation using low-cost sensors. SkySeg employs an efficient information fusion inference method, combining low-definition, wide-area images with high-definition, focused-area images. Additionally, it incorporates a cross-device test-time adaptation (TTA) strategy to enhance segmentation performance in dynamic environments by collaboratively addressing distribution shifts of test data streams across UAVs. Experimental results demonstrate that our SkySeg framework accelerates inference latency by approximately 3.6x, improves onboard segmentation accuracy by 5.91\%, and achieves a 10.91\% average accuracy gain in the wild.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_24014
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SkySeg: Collaborative Onboard Semantic Segmentation with Heterogeneous UAVs in the Wild
Lu, Anqi
Cheng, Yun
Hu, Youbing
Cao, Zhiqiang
Liu, Jie
Li, Zhijun
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The demand for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based image acquisition and analysis has surged, with UAVs increasingly utilized for semantic segmentation tasks. To meet the real-time analysis requirements of UAV remote sensing missions, performing onboard computation and making decisions based on the results is a natural approach. However, deploying semantic segmentation on resource-constrained UAV platforms presents two significant challenges: 1) hardware constraints limit the ability of UAVs to perform real-time semantic segmentation, and 2) environmental variations during flight cause data distribution shifts, deviating from the original training data. To address these issues, this paper introduces SkySeg, a heterogeneous multi-UAV air-air cooperation framework that integrates computer vision and flight pattern to enable onboard semantic segmentation using low-cost sensors. SkySeg employs an efficient information fusion inference method, combining low-definition, wide-area images with high-definition, focused-area images. Additionally, it incorporates a cross-device test-time adaptation (TTA) strategy to enhance segmentation performance in dynamic environments by collaboratively addressing distribution shifts of test data streams across UAVs. Experimental results demonstrate that our SkySeg framework accelerates inference latency by approximately 3.6x, improves onboard segmentation accuracy by 5.91\%, and achieves a 10.91\% average accuracy gain in the wild.
title SkySeg: Collaborative Onboard Semantic Segmentation with Heterogeneous UAVs in the Wild
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24014