Accurately identifying and locating water-crossing objects is of utmost importance for environmental protection. However, traditional detection algorithms often exhibit poor anti-interference performance and low detection accuracy in complex environments. To address these issues, this paper proposes a YOLOW algorithm based on a one-stage object detection algorithm for the automatic identification of water objects. The proposed algorithm incorporates two new modules, namely the SPDCS module and the SPPAUG module, to improve the model’s performance. Specifically, the SPDCS module retains all information in the channel dimension, thereby enhancing the model’s detection accuracy and recognition ability for water-crossing objects. The SPPAUG module performs multiscale feature fusion, which further improves the model’s detection accuracy and recognition ability. Moreover, the C2f module is introduced from YOLOv8 to increase the detection speed. Experimental results on a water-floating object dataset demonstrate that the improved YOLOW model outperforms the standard YOLOv5s algorithm, especially in water-crossing object detection. This research has significant implications for environmental monitoring and protection.

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a popular and cost-effective technology in urban scenarios, encompassing applications such as material transportation, aerial photography, remote sensing, and disaster relief. However, the execution of prolonged tasks poses a heightened challenge owing to the constrained endurance of UAVs. This paper proposes a model to accurately represent urban scenarios and an unmanned system. Restricted zones, no-fly zones, and building obstructions to the detection range are introduced to make sure the model is realistic enough. We also introduced an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) into the model to solve the endurance of the UAVs in this long-time task scenario. The UGV and UAVs constituted a heterogeneous unmanned system to collaboratively solve the path-planning problem in the model. Building upon this model, this paper designs a Three-stage Alternating Optimization Algorithm (TAOA), involving two crucial steps of prediction and rolling optimization. A three-stage scheme is introduced to rolling optimization to effectively address the complex optimization process for the unmanned system. Finally, the TAOA was experimentally validated in both synthetic scenarios and scenarios modeled based on a real-world location to demonstrate their reliability. The experiments conducted in the synthetic scenarios aimed to assess the algorithm under hypothetical conditions, while the experiments in the scenarios based on real-world locations provided a practical evaluation of the proposed methods in more complex and authentic environments. The consistent performance observed across these experiments underscores the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed approaches, supporting their potential applicability in various real-world scenarios.