# C2FDrone: Coarse-to-Fine Drone-to-Drone Detection using Vision Transformer Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.19276 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19276/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01355/) (2019)
- [Video Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13230/) (2021)
- [DAB-DETR: Dynamic Anchor Boxes are Better Queries for DETR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12329/) (2022)
- [CSPNet: A New Backbone that can Enhance Learning Capability of CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11929/) (2019)
- [Cascaded Partial Decoder for Fast and Accurate Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08739/) (2019)
- [ReDet: A Rotation-equivariant Detector for Aerial Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07733/) (2021)
- [Memory Enhanced Global-Local Aggregation for Video Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12063/) (2020)
- [Sequence Level Semantics Aggregation for Video Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06390/) (2019)
- [SOOD: Towards Semi-Supervised Oriented Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04515/) (2023)
- [Dogfight: Detecting Drones from Drones Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17242/) (2021)
- [TransVisDrone: Spatio-Temporal Transformer for Vision-based Drone-to-Drone Detection in Aerial Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08423/) (2022)
- [ARUBA: An Architecture-Agnostic Balanced Loss for Aerial Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04574/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Securing the Skies: A Comprehensive Survey on Anti-UAV Methods, Benchmarking, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11967/) (2025)
- [RFUAV: A Benchmark Dataset for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Detection and Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09033/) (2025)
- [Foundation Model Priors Enhance Object Focus in Feature Space for Source-Free Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17514/) (2025)
- [Efficient Self-Supervised Neuro-Analytic Visual Servoing for Real-time Quadrotor Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19878/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A vision-based drone-to-drone detection system is crucial for various applications like collision avoidance, countering hostile drones, and search-and-rescue operations. However, detecting drones presents unique challenges, including small object sizes, distortion, occlusion, and real-time processing requirements. Current methods integrating multi-scale feature fusion and temporal information have limitations in handling extreme blur and minuscule objects. To address this, we propose a novel coarse-to-fine detection strategy based on vision transformers. We evaluate our approach on three challenging drone-to-drone detection datasets, achieving F1 score enhancements of 7%, 3%, and 1% on the FL-Drones, AOT, and NPS-Drones datasets, respectively. Additionally, we demonstrate real-time processing capabilities by deploying our model on an edge-computing device. Our code will be made publicly available.