Remote Sensing Object Detection Meets Deep Learning: A Meta-review of Challenges and Advances
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Remote sensing object detection (RSOD), one of the most fundamental and challenging tasks in the remote sensing field, has received longstanding attention. In recent years, deep learning techniques have demonstrated robust feature representation capabilities and led to a big leap in the development of RSOD techniques. In this era of rapid technical evolution, this review aims to present a comprehensive review of the recent achievements in deep learning based RSOD methods. More than 300 papers are covered in this review. We identify five main challenges in RSOD, including multi-scale object detection, rotated object detection, weak object detection, tiny object detection, and object detection with limited supervision, and systematically review the corresponding methods developed in a hierarchical division manner. We also review the widely used benchmark datasets and evaluation metrics within the field of RSOD, as well as the application scenarios for RSOD. Future research directions are provided for further promoting the research in RSOD.
Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 82 of its 361 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Sep 2023.
Builds on
82 of 361 references.
References · 82
- 2015Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networkscited by 9,617
- 2016Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detectioncited by 5,021
- 2017Squeeze-and-Excitation Networkscited by 4,763
- 2016DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFscited by 3,239
- 2015SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detectorcited by 3,125
- 2019FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detectioncited by 1,573
- 2016YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Strongercited by 1,429
- 2019EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detectioncited by 1,018
- 2018Dual Attention Network for Scene Segmentationcited by 1,001
- 2018Path Aggregation Network for Instance Segmentationcited by 796
- 2017Focal Loss for Dense Object Detectioncited by 749
- 2017DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Imagescited by 622
38 more
- 2019Selective Kernel Networkscited by 401
- 2018Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Surveycited by 392
- 2019Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmarkcited by 339
- 2017Functional Map of the Worldcited by 338
- 2019Libra R-CNN: Towards Balanced Learning for Object Detectioncited by 255
- 2021Oriented R-CNN for Object Detectioncited by 230
- 2021Object Detection in Aerial Images: A Large-Scale Benchmark and Challengescited by 202
- 2021ReDet: A Rotation-equivariant Detector for Aerial Object Detectioncited by 202
- 2019R3Det: Refined Single-Stage Detector with Feature Refinement for Rotating Objectcited by 193
- 2020Align Deep Features for Oriented Object Detectioncited by 186
- 2015Weakly Supervised Deep Detection Networkscited by 183
- 2021Rethinking Rotated Object Detection with Gaussian Wasserstein Distance Losscited by 156
- 2022Advancing Plain Vision Transformer Towards Remote Sensing Foundation Modelcited by 149
- 2018xView: Objects in Context in Overhead Imagerycited by 145
- 2021FAIR1M: A Benchmark Dataset for Fine-grained Object Recognition in High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagerycited by 143
- 2017Receptive Field Block Net for Accurate and Fast Object Detectioncited by 140
- 2019Gliding vertex on the horizontal bounding box for multi-oriented object detectioncited by 134
- 2021Learning High-Precision Bounding Box for Rotated Object Detection via Kullback-Leibler Divergencecited by 130
- 2017Deep learning in remote sensing: a reviewcited by 128
- 2020More Diverse Means Better: Multimodal Deep Learning Meets Remote Sensing Imagery Classificationcited by 126
- 2022Towards Large-Scale Small Object Detection: Survey and Benchmarkscited by 119
- 2022An Empirical Study of Remote Sensing Pretrainingcited by 105
- 2019Region Proposal by Guided Anchoringcited by 87
- 2016A Large Contextual Dataset for Classification, Detection and Counting of Cars with Deep Learningcited by 86
- 2020Dense Label Encoding for Boundary Discontinuity Free Rotation Detectioncited by 79
- 2016A Survey on Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Imagescited by 78
- 2019Learning Modulated Loss for Rotated Object Detectioncited by 73
- 2022The KFIoU Loss for Rotated Object Detectioncited by 73
- 2020Dynamic Anchor Learning for Arbitrary-Oriented Object Detectioncited by 70
- 2020Oriented Object Detection in Aerial Images with Box Boundary-Aware Vectorscited by 63
- 2018Topological Map Extraction from Overhead Imagescited by 58
- 2022Detecting tiny objects in aerial images: A normalized Wasserstein distance and a new benchmarkcited by 56
- 2018Automatic Ship Detection of Remote Sensing Images from Google Earth in Complex Scenes Based on Multi-Scale Rotation Dense Feature Pyramid Networkscited by 54
- 2022RFLA: Gaussian Receptive Field based Label Assignment for Tiny Object Detectioncited by 51
- 2018Towards Multi-class Object Detection in Unconstrained Remote Sensing Imagerycited by 46
- 2019CAD-Net: A Context-Aware Detection Network for Objects in Remote Sensing Imagerycited by 43
- 2019Oriented Objects as pairs of Middle Linescited by 43
- 2017DSOD: Learning Deeply Supervised Object Detectors from Scratchcited by 41
50 most cited of 82 All 82 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 5; 2025: 8; 2026: 6.
20 papers.
Sort:
By area:
- 2024Draw-and-Understand: Leveraging Visual Prompts to Enable MLLMs to Comprehend What You Wantcited by 98
- 2024Remote Sensing ChatGPT: Solving Remote Sensing Tasks with ChatGPT and Visual Modelscited by 30
- 2023Toward Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection with CLIP-Activated Student-Teacher Learningcited by 22
- 2024Brain-Inspired Online Adaptation for Remote Sensing with Spiking Neural Networkcited by 8
- 2024MMM-RS: A Multi-modal, Multi-GSD, Multi-scene Remote Sensing Dataset and Benchmark for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 8
- 2025Wholly-WOOD: Wholly Leveraging Diversified-quality Labels for Weakly-supervised Oriented Object Detectioncited by 6
- 2024Exploiting Unlabeled Data with Multiple Expert Teachers for Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection and Its Orientation Adaptationcited by 4
- 2026Fourier Angle Alignment for Oriented Object Detection in Remote Sensingcited by 3
- 2025Remote Sensing-Oriented World Modelcited by 2
- 2025Remote Sensing Image Intelligent Interpretation with the Language-Centered Perspective: Principles, Methods and Challengescited by 1
- 2025Integrating Machine Learning into Belief-Desire-Intention Agents: Current Advances and Open Challengescited by 1
- 2025DiffMOD: Progressive Diffusion Point Denoising for Moving Object Detection in Remote Sensingcited by 0
8 more
- 2025MVT: Mask-Grounded Vision-Language Models for Taxonomy-Aligned Land-Cover Taggingcited by 0
- 2025Scale-Aware Relay and Scale-Adaptive Loss for Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Imagescited by 0
- 2025Noise-Aware and Dynamically Adaptive Federated Defense Framework for SAR Image Target Recognitioncited by 0
- 2026FGAA-FPN: Foreground-Guided Angle-Aware Feature Pyramid Network for Oriented Object Detectioncited by 0
- 2026PASTE: Physics-Aware Scattering Topology Embedding Framework for SAR Object Detectioncited by 0
- 2026HMR-Net: Hierarchical Modular Routing for Cross-Domain Object Detection in Aerial Imagescited by 0
- 2026Diagnosing Aerial-View Object Detectors with Foundational Image Generative Modelscited by 0
- 2026Hyperbolic Geometry for Open-World Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagerycited by 0
- 2026Hyperbolic Geometry for Open-World Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery9 Sep 2026
- 2026Diagnosing Aerial-View Object Detectors with Foundational Image Generative Models2 Jul 2026
- 2026HMR-Net: Hierarchical Modular Routing for Cross-Domain Object Detection in Aerial Images20 Apr 2026
- 2026PASTE: Physics-Aware Scattering Topology Embedding Framework for SAR Object Detection16 Mar 2026
- 2026Fourier Angle Alignment for Oriented Object Detection in Remote Sensing27 Feb 2026
- 2026FGAA-FPN: Foreground-Guided Angle-Aware Feature Pyramid Network for Oriented Object Detection11 Feb 2026
- 2025Noise-Aware and Dynamically Adaptive Federated Defense Framework for SAR Image Target Recognition31 Dec 2025
- 2025Scale-Aware Relay and Scale-Adaptive Loss for Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Images13 Nov 2025
- 2025Integrating Machine Learning into Belief-Desire-Intention Agents: Current Advances and Open Challenges23 Oct 2025
- 2025MVT: Mask-Grounded Vision-Language Models for Taxonomy-Aligned Land-Cover Tagging23 Sep 2025
- 2025Remote Sensing-Oriented World Model22 Sep 2025
- 2025Remote Sensing Image Intelligent Interpretation with the Language-Centered Perspective: Principles, Methods and Challenges9 Aug 2025
8 more
- 2025DiffMOD: Progressive Diffusion Point Denoising for Moving Object Detection in Remote Sensing14 Apr 2025
- 2025Wholly-WOOD: Wholly Leveraging Diversified-quality Labels for Weakly-supervised Oriented Object Detection13 Feb 2025
- 2024Exploiting Unlabeled Data with Multiple Expert Teachers for Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection and Its Orientation Adaptation4 Nov 2024
- 2024MMM-RS: A Multi-modal, Multi-GSD, Multi-scene Remote Sensing Dataset and Benchmark for Text-to-Image Generation26 Oct 2024
- 2024Brain-Inspired Online Adaptation for Remote Sensing with Spiking Neural Network3 Sep 2024
- 2024Draw-and-Understand: Leveraging Visual Prompts to Enable MLLMs to Comprehend What You Want29 Mar 2024
- 2024Remote Sensing ChatGPT: Solving Remote Sensing Tasks with ChatGPT and Visual Models17 Jan 2024
- 2023Toward Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection with CLIP-Activated Student-Teacher Learning20 Nov 2023
- 2025Remote Sensing-Oriented World Modelcited by 2
- 2025Remote Sensing-Oriented World Model22 Sep 2025
- 2024Remote Sensing ChatGPT: Solving Remote Sensing Tasks with ChatGPT and Visual Modelscited by 30
- 2023Toward Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection with CLIP-Activated Student-Teacher Learningcited by 22
- 2024Brain-Inspired Online Adaptation for Remote Sensing with Spiking Neural Networkcited by 8
- 2025Wholly-WOOD: Wholly Leveraging Diversified-quality Labels for Weakly-supervised Oriented Object Detectioncited by 6
- 2024Exploiting Unlabeled Data with Multiple Expert Teachers for Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection and Its Orientation Adaptationcited by 4
- 2026Fourier Angle Alignment for Oriented Object Detection in Remote Sensingcited by 3
- 2025Remote Sensing Image Intelligent Interpretation with the Language-Centered Perspective: Principles, Methods and Challengescited by 1
- 2025Integrating Machine Learning into Belief-Desire-Intention Agents: Current Advances and Open Challengescited by 1
- 2025DiffMOD: Progressive Diffusion Point Denoising for Moving Object Detection in Remote Sensingcited by 0
- 2025Scale-Aware Relay and Scale-Adaptive Loss for Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Imagescited by 0
- 2026FGAA-FPN: Foreground-Guided Angle-Aware Feature Pyramid Network for Oriented Object Detectioncited by 0
- 2026PASTE: Physics-Aware Scattering Topology Embedding Framework for SAR Object Detectioncited by 0
12 most cited of 15 All 15 (JSON)
- 2026Hyperbolic Geometry for Open-World Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery9 Sep 2026
- 2026Diagnosing Aerial-View Object Detectors with Foundational Image Generative Models2 Jul 2026
- 2026HMR-Net: Hierarchical Modular Routing for Cross-Domain Object Detection in Aerial Images20 Apr 2026
- 2026PASTE: Physics-Aware Scattering Topology Embedding Framework for SAR Object Detection16 Mar 2026
- 2026Fourier Angle Alignment for Oriented Object Detection in Remote Sensing27 Feb 2026
- 2026FGAA-FPN: Foreground-Guided Angle-Aware Feature Pyramid Network for Oriented Object Detection11 Feb 2026
- 2025Scale-Aware Relay and Scale-Adaptive Loss for Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Images13 Nov 2025
- 2025Integrating Machine Learning into Belief-Desire-Intention Agents: Current Advances and Open Challenges23 Oct 2025
- 2025Remote Sensing Image Intelligent Interpretation with the Language-Centered Perspective: Principles, Methods and Challenges9 Aug 2025
- 2025DiffMOD: Progressive Diffusion Point Denoising for Moving Object Detection in Remote Sensing14 Apr 2025
- 2025Wholly-WOOD: Wholly Leveraging Diversified-quality Labels for Weakly-supervised Oriented Object Detection13 Feb 2025
- 2024Exploiting Unlabeled Data with Multiple Expert Teachers for Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection and Its Orientation Adaptation4 Nov 2024
12 newest of 15 All 15 (JSON)