# Deep Learning Computer Vision Algorithms for Real-time UAVs On-board Camera Image Processing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.01037 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01037/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Pyramid Scene Parsing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01105/) (2016)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [Two-Stream Convolutional Networks for Action Recognition in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2199/) (2014)
- [Temporal Segment Networks: Towards Good Practices for Deep Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00859/) (2016)
- [Spatial Pyramid Pooling in Deep Convolutional Networks for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.4729/) (2014)
- [Segmentation Transformer: Object-Contextual Representations for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.11065/) (2019)
- [Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.7062/) (2014)
- [Object Detection with Deep Learning: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05511/) (2018)
- [Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Networks for Visual Recognition and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4389/) (2014)
- [Learning Deconvolution Network for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04366/) (2015)
- [Road Extraction by Deep Residual U-Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10684/) (2017)
- [ENet: A Deep Neural Network Architecture for Real-Time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.02147/) (2016)
- [Auto-DeepLab: Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02985/) (2019)
- [High-Resolution Representations for Labeling Pixels and Regions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04514/) (2019)
- [ParseNet: Looking Wider to See Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04579/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Reinforcement Learning for Decision-Level Interception Prioritization in Drone Swarm Defense](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00641/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper describes how advanced deep learning based computer vision algorithms are applied to enable real-time on-board sensor processing for small UAVs. Four use cases are considered: target detection, classification and localization, road segmentation for autonomous navigation in GNSS-denied zones, human body segmentation, and human action recognition. All algorithms have been developed using state-of-the-art image processing methods based on deep neural networks. Acquisition campaigns have been carried out to collect custom datasets reflecting typical operational scenarios, where the peculiar point of view of a multi-rotor UAV is replicated. Algorithms architectures and trained models performances are reported, showing high levels of both accuracy and inference speed. Output examples and on-field videos are presented, demonstrating models operation when deployed on a GPU-powered commercial embedded device (NVIDIA Jetson Xavier) mounted on board of a custom quad-rotor, paving the way to enabling high level autonomy.