Advanced drone-based weed detection using feature-enriched deep learning approach

This research addresses the pressing challenge of weed identification in agriculture, crucial for ensuring food security in anticipation of a global population exceeding 9.7 billion by 2050. Utilizing drone imagery, we collected a dataset and proposed a customized model to achieve optimal performance. Our proposed model uses strategically modified backbone, neck, and head components, leveraging elements such as Ghost Convolution, BottleNeckCSP, and ECA (Efficient Channel Attention) layers. These modifications enhance the model’s capability to discern intricate patterns in drone imagery, ultimately leading to improved precision in weed detection. We introduce a purposefully crafted dataset to complement the model’s training, and our experiments demonstrate superior performance compared to the baseline models. Our model achieves a precision of 72.5%, recall of 68.0%, and mAP@0.5 of 73.9, showcasing the effectiveness of our approach in enhancing detection accuracy. Leveraging a unique blend of feature extraction mechanisms, our model achieves remarkable accuracy in real-time soybean detection, outperforming established models like RT-DETR (Real-Time DEtection TransfoRmer) and YOLOv10. A detailed ablation study and comparative analysis with different YOLO versions and the transformer-based RT-DETR showcase the effectiveness of the proposed enhancements. Our work signifies a significant step towards advancing the field of precision agriculture, offering a model that is not only adaptive but also robust in identifying and localizing weeds in soybean fields.