WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories

Accurate detection and timely management of high-voltage transmission accessories are crucial for ensuring the safe operation of power transmission. Existing network models suffer from issues like low precision in accessory detection, elevated model complexity, and a narrow range of category detecti...

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Main Authors: Jiawei Chen, Pengfei Shi, Mengyao Xu, Yuanxue Xin, Xinnan Fan, Jinbo Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Drones
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/9/4/318
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author Jiawei Chen
Pengfei Shi
Mengyao Xu
Yuanxue Xin
Xinnan Fan
Jinbo Zhang
author_facet Jiawei Chen
Pengfei Shi
Mengyao Xu
Yuanxue Xin
Xinnan Fan
Jinbo Zhang
author_sort Jiawei Chen
collection DOAJ
description Accurate detection and timely management of high-voltage transmission accessories are crucial for ensuring the safe operation of power transmission. Existing network models suffer from issues like low precision in accessory detection, elevated model complexity, and a narrow range of category detection, especially in UAV-based inspection scenarios. To alleviate the above problems, we propose an innovative Weight Coordinated Adaptive Network (WCANet) in this paper, aiming to improve the efficiency and accuracy of high-voltage transmission accessories detection. The network is designed with a plug-and-play WCA module that can effectively identify dense small targets, retain information in each channel, and reduce computational overheads, while incorporating Sim-AFPN with a skip-connection structure into the network aggregate feature information layer by layer, enhancing the ability to capture key features, and achieving a lightweight network structure. The WIoU loss of bounding box regression (BBR) is to reduce the competitiveness of high-quality anchor boxes and mask the effects of the low-quality examples, thus improving the accuracy of the model. The experimental results show that WCANet has achieved remarkable results in the HVTA, VisDrone2019, and VOC2007 datasets. Compared with other methods, our WCANet achieves highly accurate prediction of high-voltage transmission accessories with fewer parameters and model sizes, availably balancing model performance and complexity.
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issn 2504-446X
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series Drones
spelling doaj-art-d90d0d72356d414abf4bcb682772f03d2025-08-20T02:17:20ZengMDPI AGDrones2504-446X2025-04-019431810.3390/drones9040318WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line AccessoriesJiawei Chen0Pengfei Shi1Mengyao Xu2Yuanxue Xin3Xinnan Fan4Jinbo Zhang5College of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Hohai University, 1915 Hehai Road, Jintan District, Changzhou 213200, ChinaCollege of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Hohai University, 1915 Hehai Road, Jintan District, Changzhou 213200, ChinaCollege of Information Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou 213200, ChinaCollege of Information Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou 213200, ChinaCollege of Information Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou 213200, ChinaKey Laboratory of Power Transmission Distribution Equipment Technology, Hohai University, Changzhou 213022, ChinaAccurate detection and timely management of high-voltage transmission accessories are crucial for ensuring the safe operation of power transmission. Existing network models suffer from issues like low precision in accessory detection, elevated model complexity, and a narrow range of category detection, especially in UAV-based inspection scenarios. To alleviate the above problems, we propose an innovative Weight Coordinated Adaptive Network (WCANet) in this paper, aiming to improve the efficiency and accuracy of high-voltage transmission accessories detection. The network is designed with a plug-and-play WCA module that can effectively identify dense small targets, retain information in each channel, and reduce computational overheads, while incorporating Sim-AFPN with a skip-connection structure into the network aggregate feature information layer by layer, enhancing the ability to capture key features, and achieving a lightweight network structure. The WIoU loss of bounding box regression (BBR) is to reduce the competitiveness of high-quality anchor boxes and mask the effects of the low-quality examples, thus improving the accuracy of the model. The experimental results show that WCANet has achieved remarkable results in the HVTA, VisDrone2019, and VOC2007 datasets. Compared with other methods, our WCANet achieves highly accurate prediction of high-voltage transmission accessories with fewer parameters and model sizes, availably balancing model performance and complexity.https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/9/4/318transmission lineobject detectionattention moduleconvolutional neural networkfeature pyramid network
spellingShingle Jiawei Chen
Pengfei Shi
Mengyao Xu
Yuanxue Xin
Xinnan Fan
Jinbo Zhang
WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
Drones
transmission line
object detection
attention module
convolutional neural network
feature pyramid network
title WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
title_full WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
title_fullStr WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
title_full_unstemmed WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
title_short WCANet: An Efficient and Lightweight Weight Coordinated Adaptive Detection Network for UAV Inspection of Transmission Line Accessories
title_sort wcanet an efficient and lightweight weight coordinated adaptive detection network for uav inspection of transmission line accessories
topic transmission line
object detection
attention module
convolutional neural network
feature pyramid network
url https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/9/4/318
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AT mengyaoxu wcanetanefficientandlightweightweightcoordinatedadaptivedetectionnetworkforuavinspectionoftransmissionlineaccessories
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AT xinnanfan wcanetanefficientandlightweightweightcoordinatedadaptivedetectionnetworkforuavinspectionoftransmissionlineaccessories
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