The detection of small infrared targets lacking texture and shape information in the presence of complex background clutter is a challenge that has attracted considerable research attention in recent years. Typical deep learning-based target detection methods are designed with deeper network structures, which may lose targets in the deeper layers and cannot directly be used for small infrared target detection. Therefore, we designed the attention fusion feature pyramid network (AFFPN) specifically for small infrared target detection. Specifically, it consists of feature extraction and feature fusion modules. In the feature extraction stage, the global contextual prior information of small targets is first considered in the deep layer of the network using the atrous spatial pyramid pooling module. Subsequently, the spatial location and semantic information features of small infrared targets in the shallow and deep layers are adaptively enhanced by the designed attention fusion module to improve the feature representation capability of the network for targets. Finally, high-performance detection is achieved through the multilayer feature fusion mechanism. Moreover, we performed a comprehensive ablation study to evaluate the effectiveness of each component. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs better than state-of-the-art methods on a publicly available dataset. Furthermore, AFFPN was deployed on an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier development board and achieved real-time target detection, further advancing practical research and applications in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle infrared search and tracking.

Significant advances have been made in the development of deep convolutional networks for RGBD semantic segmentation. However, the full extraction and utilization of depth information to assist semantic segmentation remains challenging. In this study, we propose the Link-RGBD module to fuse RGB and depth features using an innovative interactive attention mechanism to augment the representations of the objects of interest. The attention map gotten from RGB and depth branch is regarded as weight for value (v) in the other branch in order to achieve cross fusion. This enhances the coordinates and feature information and augments the representations of the objects of interest. We evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed method and achieved competitive results on the challenging SUN RGB-D and NYUDv2 semantic segmentation benchmarks. Its pixel accuracy is 0.2% higher than that of DeepLabv3+, reaching 83.1% on the SUN RGB-D benchmark. Moreover, its mean IoU score is 0.3% higher than that of DeepLabv3+, reaching 49.5% on the NYUDv2 benchmark. We further constructed a robot test system to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in a real scenario. The results show that the proposed method can support the completion of the moving forward and grasping task.

Compared to images captured from ground-level perspectives, objects in UAV images are often more challenging to track due to factors such as long-distance shooting, occlusion, and motion blur. Traditional multi-object trackers are not well-suited for UAV multi-object tracking tasks. To address these challenges, we propose an online multi-object tracking network, OMCTrack. To better handle object occlusion and re-identification, we designed an occlusion perception module that re-identifies lost objects and manages occlusion without increasing computational complexity. By employing a simple yet effective hierarchical association method, this module enhances tracking accuracy and robustness under occlusion conditions. Additionally, we developed an adaptive motion compensation module that leverages prior information to dynamically detect image distortion, enabling the system to handle the UAV’s complex movements. The results from the experiments on the VisDrone2019 and UAVDT datasets demonstrate that OMCTrack significantly outperforms existing UAV video tracking methods.

Multispectral object detection faces challenges in effectively integrating complementary information from different modalities in complex environmental conditions. This paper proposes SDRFPT-Net (Spectral Dual-stream Recursive Fusion Perception Target Network), a novel architecture that integrates three key innovative modules: (1) the Spectral Hierarchical Perception Architecture (SHPA), which adopts a dual-stream separated structure with independently parameterized feature extraction paths for visible and infrared modalities; (2) the Spectral Recursive Fusion Module (SRFM), which combines hybrid attention mechanisms with recursive progressive fusion strategies to achieve deep feature interaction through parameter-sharing multi-round recursive processing; and (3) the Spectral Target Perception Enhancement Module (STPEM), which adaptively enhances target region representation and suppresses background interference. Extensive experiments on the VEDAI, FLIR-aligned, and LLVIP datasets demonstrate that SDRFPT-Net significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods, with improvements of 2.5% in mAP50 and 5.4% in mAP50:95 on VEDAI, 11.5% in mAP50 on FLIR-aligned, and 9.5% in mAP50:95 on LLVIP. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of each proposed module. The proposed method provides an efficient and robust solution for multispectral object detection in remote sensing image interpretation, making it particularly suitable for all-weather monitoring applications from aerial and satellite platforms, as well as in intelligent surveillance and autonomous driving domains.

In low-altitude multi-object tracking (MOT), challenges such as frequent inter-object occlusion and complex non-linear motion disrupt the appearance of individual targets and the continuity of their trajectories, leading to frequent tracking failures. We posit that the relatively stable spatio-temporal relationships within object groups (e.g., pedestrians and vehicles) offer powerful contextual cues to resolve such ambiguities. We present NOWA-MOT (Neighbors Know Who We Are), a novel tracking-by-detection framework designed to systematically exploit this principle through a multi-stage association process. We make three primary contributions. First, we introduce a Low-Confidence Occlusion Recovery (LOR) module that dynamically adjusts detection scores by integrating IoU, a novel Recovery IoU (RIoU) metric, and location similarity to surrounding objects, enabling occluded targets to participate in high-priority matching. Second, for initial data association, we propose a Graph Cross-Attention (GCA) mechanism. In this module, separate graphs are constructed for detections and trajectories, and a cross-attention architecture is employed to propagate rich contextual information between them, yielding highly discriminative feature representations for robust matching. Third, to resolve the remaining ambiguities, we design a cascaded Matched Neighbor Guidance (MNG) module, which uniquely leverages the reliably matched pairs from the first stage as contextual anchors. Through MNG, star-shaped topological features are built for unmatched objects relative to their stable neighbors, enabling accurate association even when intrinsic features are weak. Our comprehensive experimental evaluation on the VisDrone2019 and UAVDT datasets confirms the superiority of our approach, achieving state-of-the-art HOTA scores of 51.34% and 62.69%, respectively, and drastically reducing identity switches compared to previous methods.

Limited by the imaging capabilities of sensors, research based on single modality is difficult to cope with faults and dynamic perturbations in detection. Effective multispectral object detection, which can achieve better detection accuracy by fusing visual information from different modalities, has attracted widespread attention. However, most of the existing methods adopt simple fusion mechanisms, which fail to utilize the complementary information between modalities while lacking the guidance of a priori knowledge. To address the above issues, we propose a novel background-aware cross-attention multiscale fusion network (BA-CAMF Net) to achieve adaptive fusion in visible and infrared images. First, a background-aware module is designed to calculate the light and contrast to guide the fusion. Then, a cross-attention multiscale fusion module is put forward to enhance inter-modality complement features and intra-modality intrinsic features. Finally, multiscale feature maps from different modalities are fused according to background-aware weights. Experimental results on LLVIP, FLIR, and VEDAI indicate that the proposed BA-CAMF Net achieves higher detection accuracy than the current State-of-the-Art multispectral detectors.