# Super accurate low latency object detection on a surveillance UAV

Source: [Super accurate low latency object detection on a surveillance UAV](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa65891e209131cea0ae99>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T21:29:43.441Z

Authors: Maarten Vandersteegen, Kristof Vanbeeck, Toon goedeme

Published: 2019-04-03T14:29:07.000Z

## Abstract

Drones have proven to be useful in many industry segments such as security and surveillance, where e.g. on-board real-time object tracking is a necessity for autonomous flying guards. Tracking and following suspicious objects is therefore required in real-time on limited hardware. With an object detector in the loop, low latency becomes extremely important. In this paper, we propose a solution to make object detection for UAVs both fast and super accurate. We propose a multi-dataset learning strategy yielding top eye-sky object detection accuracy. Our model generalizes well on unseen data and can cope with different flying heights, optically zoomed-in shots and different viewing angles. We apply optimization steps such that we achieve minimal latency on embedded on-board hardware by fusing layers, quantizing calculations to 16-bit floats and 8-bit integers, with negligible loss in accuracy. We validate on NVIDIA's Jetson TX2 and Jetson Xavier platforms where we achieve a speed-wise performance boost of more than 10x.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02024>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.02024.pdf>)
