Aerial Object Detection

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Overview

Aerial object detection studies how to find and classify objects in images captured from drones, aircraft, and satellites, where targets may be tiny, crowded, rotated, or partly obscured. Common approaches include YOLO-style detectors and DETR transformers, high-resolution feature pyramids and image slicing, oriented bounding boxes, and fusion of RGB with thermal or event-camera data. VisDrone and UAVDT test drone imagery, while DOTA and related benchmarks emphasize large, varied scenes and rotated objects; recent work also explores open-vocabulary recognition, weak supervision, and efficient deployment on edge devices. A central tension is improving small-object accuracy without excessive computation, while performance across weather, sensors, locations, and datasets remains difficult to guarantee.

Latest papers

CardsList

122 papers8 papers in the last four weeks, down 47% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. NIF: Normal-Intersection Fields for Geometrically Consistent Oriented Box Refinement

    Oct 29, 2026Shaokai ZhengObject DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    Shanghai Zhongchao Automation Engineering Co., Ltd.

  2. SGLDet: Spectral-aware Global-Local Dynamic Modeling for Multispectral Aerial Object Detection

    Oct 20, 2026Peng Zhang, Shuaihao Han, Tingfa Xu +1Multispectral Object DetectionObject Detection

    Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China · Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China, and also with Chongqing Innovation Center, Beijing Institute of Technology, Chongqing 401135, China

  3. CARNet: End-to-End Coupled Association-Recognition Network for Fine-Grained Multi-Drone Collaborative Detection

    Oct 19, 2026Zhao Zhang, Ruigang Fu, Yu Zhang +3Aerial Object DetectionCooperative Perception

    College of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

  4. Precision Cotton Disease Management: Leveraging UAV Imagery and Custom YOLO Deep Learning Framework for Enhanced Detection

    Oct 16, 20261. Anwar Iqbal*1 aiqbal. rime23smme@student. nust. edu. pk 2. Kunwar Faraz Ahmad Khan1 kunwar. faraz@smme. nust. edu. pk 3. Shahbaz Khan1 shahbaz. khan@smme. nust. edu. pk 4. Khawaja Fahad Iqbal1 fahad. iqbal@smme. nust. edu. pk 5. Sara Ali1, 2 sara. baber@smme. nust. edu. pk 6. Saqib Nazir1 saqib. nazir@smme. nust. edu. pk 7. Muhammad Azhar Javed3 muhammadazhar6231@gmail. com 1 Department of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence +11Efficient Object DetectionPlant Disease Classification

    NUST

  5. A unified three-branch deep learning framework for automated detection and counting of wildlife in aerial imagery

    Oct 12, 2026Zeyu Xu, Tiejun Wang, Andrew Skidmore +5Image MatchingWildlife Monitoring

    School of Geospatial Engineering and Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China · Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands · Boma and Badingilo National Parks, African Parks, Juba, South Sudan +3

  6. Can Synthetic UAV Benchmarks Be Trusted? Real-Synthetic Validation for UAV Model Selection

    Oct 10, 2026Yuyi Zhi, Min Du, Bill Shi +4Synthetic Data EvaluationUAV Remote Sensing

    Yuyi Zhi is with Zhejiang University. · Min Du, Bill Shi, Guodong Yuan, and Xin Guan are with Avant Robotics. · Junheng Liang is with University of Science and Technology Beijing. +1

  7. LiG-DETR: Local-in-Global Reassembly in Latent Space for Aerial Object Detection

    Oct 7, 2026Yupeng Zhang, Fangzhuo Gao, Juntao Cheng +3Aerial Object DetectionRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    Tianjin University. · Shanghai Jiaotong University. · Shanghai AI Laboratory. +1

  8. Catastrophic Forgetting in Sequential Thermal Anti-UAV Detection: The Role of Scale-Conditioned Gradient Imbalance

    Oct 6, 2026Khac Duc Giang Nguyen, Seyed Sahand Mohammadi Ziabari, Ali Mohammed Mansoor AlsahagContinual Object DetectionReplay-Based Continual Learning

    University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands · Department of Computer Science and Technology, SUNY Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY, USA

  9. What Frame-Level Labels Can and Cannot Do for Small-UAV Point Detection in Thermal Video

    Oct 6, 2026Wonbin Son, Gyumum Choi, Junil Seo +1Infrared Small Target DetectionUAV Detection

  10. CSCWD: Cross-Scale Channel-wise Knowledge Distillation for Lightweight Tiny Object Detection on Edge Devices

    Sep 24, 2026Amir Zamani, Zeinab Ghasemi-NaraghiSmall Object DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Revolution Comprehensive University, Tehran, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

  11. FoCal: Frequency-Oriented Cross-Modal Interaction and Spectral Calibration for Aerial Visible-Infrared Object Detection

    Sep 24, 2026Ben Liang, Chao Sui, Junqi Bai +4Multispectral Object DetectionInfrared Object Detection

    School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · 28th Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, Nanjing 210007, China · School of Electronic Science and Technology, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, China +1

  12. Hi-OPD: Hierarchy-Aware Open-Prompt Detection for Remote Sensing Images

    Sep 22, 2026Jinlong Hu, Yi Zhang, Zhiqi Xia +2Object DetectionOpen-Vocabulary Object Detection

    Wuhan University · Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration

  13. HDMamba-YOLO: Efficient State-Space Perception and Local Spatial Reconstruction for UAV Small Object

    Sep 19, 2026Linduo Wei, Junjie Fan, Yijun Mai +1Aerial Object DetectionRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China · School of Intellectual Property, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China

  14. PointEvent: Rethinking Event-based Tiny Object Detection via Serialized Motion Evidence Accumulation

    Sep 17, 2026Zongze Wu, Baofeng Jia, Weiqi Yan +4Small Object DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    State key Lab of Extreme Environment Optoelectronic Dynamic Testing Technology and Instrument, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China · Jiangsu Key Lab of Visual Sensing and Intelligent Perception, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China · Fujian Key Laboratory of Urban Intelligent Sensing and Computing, Xiamen University, China

  15. Understanding Dynamic Scenes at Gigapixel Scale: Wide-Area Spatio-Temporal Perception from UAVs

    Sep 16, 2026Yuhang Zhu, Meiyi Zhu, Yunkai Dang +4Remote SensingUAV Remote Sensing

    Nanjing University

  16. Det-LIME: Detector-Aware, Multi-Instance Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations for Automated Marine Mammal Detection

    Sep 15, 2026Jiayi Zhou, David W. Johnston, Brinnae BentExplainable Artificial IntelligenceExplainable Object Detection

    Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States · Division of Marine Science and Conservation, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States

  17. EECTracker: Swarm Motion Prior-Guided Feature Compensation for Airborne Optical UAV Swarm Tracking

    Sep 14, 2026Zhaochen Chu, Tao Song, Ren Jin +2Swarm RoboticsAerial Object Detection

    China-UAE Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Intelligent Unmanned Systems, School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

  18. Small Object Detection in Drone Aerial Imagery with LAF-YOLOv10

    Sep 13, 2026Quratulain Nayeem, Fahmina Taranum, Mohammed Mudassir UddinObject DetectionSmall Object Detection

  19. YOLO12-MambaScan: An Efficient Object Detector with High-Frequency Enhancement and State-Space Modeling

    Sep 12, 2026Hao WangAerial Object DetectionRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    BDNRC

  20. HGSQ: Heatmap-Guided Sparse Query Detector for Real-Time Aerial Small Object Detection

    Sep 10, 2026Yangchen ZengObject DetectionAerial Object Detection

    School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China.

  21. Evaluating the Robustness of Anti-UAV Detection under Controlled Fog Degradation: Fog-Aware Training and Clear-Sky Tradeoff

    Sep 10, 2026Gur Levy Birkental, Seyed Sahand Mohammadi Ziabari, Ali Mohammed Mansoor AlsahagUAV DetectionObject Detection

    University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands · Department of Computer Science and Technology, SUNY Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY, USA

  22. ScopeMamba-YOLO: Widening the Perceptual Scope Inward and Outward for Small Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery

    Sep 9, 2026Junjie Fan, Yijun Mai, Linduo Wei +5Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    School of Intellectual Property, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China

  23. Hyperbolic Geometry for Open-World Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery

    Sep 9, 2026Wuzhou Li, Jiawei Zhou, Shenghang Wang +1Open-Vocabulary Object DetectionContinual Learning

    School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan 430072, China · Electronic Information School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China · Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA +1

  24. Evidential Deep Learning for Multi-Modal Anti-UAV Detection

    Sep 1, 2026Dmitry Golovchits, Seyed Sahand Mohammadi Ziabari, Ali Mohammed Mansoor AlsahagEvidential Deep LearningDempster-Shafer Theory

    University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  25. ARMOR: Manifold-Oriented Training for Adversarially Robust Aerial Object Detection under Data Scarcity

    Aug 30, 2026Haoran Wang, Matthew Lau, Alec Helbling +7Adversarial RobustnessAdversarial Training

    Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA · Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE

  26. Uncertainty-Aware Multimodal Anti-UAV Detection via Evidential Fusion and Conflict-Discounted Belief Aggregation

    Aug 29, 2026Sharanda Suttorp, Seyed Sahand Mohammadi Ziabari, Ali Mohammed Mansour AlsahagUncertainty-Aware Multimodal FusionAerial Object Detection

    University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands · Department of Computer Science and Technology, SUNY Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY, USA

  27. A-PAIR: A Benchmark and Identity-Consistent Grounding Framework for Air-Ground Cross-View Referring Person Detection

    Aug 28, 2026Zhoupeng Guo, Xinjie Yao, Yunqi Zhu +6Vision-Language GroundingMulti-View Consistency

    School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing, China · Faculty of Information Engineering and Automation, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia +3

  28. Variable-Granularity Tokenization for High-Resolution Object Detection

    Aug 27, 2026Khayrul IslamVisual TokenizationEfficient Object Detection

    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 7000 East Ave, Livermore, CA 94550

  29. Hull First, Wake Second: Wake-Reliance Suppression for Robust Maritime Vessel Detection

    Aug 27, 2026Yefan Wang, Xingyu Wang, Ruibiao Zhu +1Ship DetectionObject Detection

    University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China · University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Liaoning, China · School of Computing, College of Systems and Society, The Australian National University, ACT, Australia +1

  30. On the Transferability of Agricultural Weed Detection Under Cross-Field Distribution Shift

    Aug 21, 2026Nikhilesh Prabhakar, Pranuthi Tenali, Wilfredo Abudeye Fernandez +5Weed DetectionCross-Dataset Generalization

    The University of Texas at Dallas · The University of Texas at Tyler · Air Force Research Lab