mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Decade of You Only Look Once (YOLO) for Object Detection: A Review

arXiv 2504.18586 ↗First posted 24 Apr 2025cs.CVcited by 3

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Abstract (arXiv)

This review marks the tenth anniversary of You Only Look Once (YOLO), one of the most influential frameworks in real-time object detection. Over the past decade, YOLO has evolved from a streamlined detector into a diverse family of architectures characterized by efficient design, modular scalability, and cross-domain adaptability. The paper presents a technical overview of the main versions (from YOLOv1 to YOLOv13), highlights key architectural trends, and surveys the principal application areas in which YOLO has been adopted. It also addresses evaluation practices, ethical considerations, and potential future directions for the framework's continued development. The analysis aims to provide a comprehensive and critical perspective on YOLO's trajectory and ongoing transformation.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 72 of its 418 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Apr 2025.

Builds on

72 of 418 references.

References · 72

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  2. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,498
  3. 2015Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networkscited by 9,617
  4. 2014ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challengecited by 8,441
  5. 2019EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 6,415
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38 more
  1. 2018YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvementcited by 2,652
  2. 2019Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Datasetcited by 2,436
  3. 2020YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detectioncited by 1,624
  4. 2016YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Strongercited by 1,429
  5. 2018BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learningcited by 1,282
  6. 2021YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021cited by 1,064
  7. 2019EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detectioncited by 1,018
  8. 2022YOLOv7: Trainable bag-of-freebies sets new state-of-the-art for real-time object detectorscited by 978
  9. 2018Path Aggregation Network for Instance Segmentationcited by 796
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  11. 2019Object Detection in 20 Years: A Surveycited by 528
  12. 2018Object Detection with Deep Learning: A Reviewcited by 524
  13. 2024YOLOv10: Real-Time End-to-End Object Detectioncited by 508
  14. 2024YOLO-World: Real-Time Open-Vocabulary Object Detectioncited by 498
  15. 2019Distance-IoU Loss: Faster and Better Learning for Bounding Box Regressioncited by 454
  16. 2024YOLOv9: Learning What You Want to Learn Using Programmable Gradient Informationcited by 422
  17. 2020Generalized Focal Loss: Learning Qualified and Distributed Bounding Boxes for Dense Object Detectioncited by 408
  18. 2020A Survey of Convolutional Neural Networks: Analysis, Applications, and Prospectscited by 396
  19. 2019CSPNet: A New Backbone that can Enhance Learning Capability of CNNcited by 381
  20. 2020Knowledge Distillation and Student-Teacher Learning for Visual Intelligence: A Review and New Outlookscited by 312
  21. 2025YOLOv12: Attention-Centric Real-Time Object Detectorscited by 300
  22. 2018CrowdHuman: A Benchmark for Detecting Human in a Crowdcited by 283
  23. 2022YOLOv6: A Single-Stage Object Detection Framework for Industrial Applicationscited by 273
  24. 2020Detection and Tracking Meet Drones Challengecited by 261
  25. 2020VarifocalNet: An IoU-aware Dense Object Detectorcited by 230
  26. 2020Multi-scale Interactive Network for Salient Object Detectioncited by 212
  27. 2020Scaled-YOLOv4: Scaling Cross Stage Partial Networkcited by 211
  28. 2021Object Detection in Aerial Images: A Large-Scale Benchmark and Challengescited by 202
  29. 2019An Energy and GPU-Computation Efficient Backbone Network for Real-Time Object Detectioncited by 163
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  38. 2021You Only Learn One Representation: Unified Network for Multiple Taskscited by 86

50 most cited of 72 All 72 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 2.

3 papers.

  1. 2026YOLOE-26: Integrating YOLO26 with YOLOE for Real-Time Open-Vocabulary Instance Segmentationcited by 3
  2. 2025Hardware optimization on Android for inference of AI modelscited by 0
  3. 2026A Compact and Efficient 1.251 Million Parameter Machine Learning CNN Model PD36-C for Plant Disease Detection: A Case Studycited by 0