Large-Scale High-Altitude UAV-Based Vehicle Detection via Pyramid Dual Pooling Attention Path Aggregation Network

UAVs can collect vehicle data in high-altitude scenes, playing a significant role in intelligent urban management due to their wide of view. Nevertheless, the current datasets for UAV-based vehicle detection are acquired at altitude below 150 meters. This contrasts with the data perspective obtained from high-altitude scenes, potentially leading to incongruities in data distribution. Consequently, it is challenging to apply these datasets effectively in high-altitude scenes, and there is an ongoing obstacle. To resolve this challenge, we developed a comprehensive vehicle dataset named LH-UAV-Vehicle, specifically collected at flight altitudes ranging from 250 to 400 meters. Collecting data at higher flight altitudes offers a broader perspective, but it concurrently introduces complexity and diversity in the background, which consequently impacts vehicle localization and recognition accuracy. In response, we proposed the pyramid dual pooling attention path aggregation network (PDPA-PAN), an innovative framework that improves detection performance in high-altitude scenes by combining spatial and semantic information. Object attention integration in both spatial and channel dimensions is aimed by the pyramid dual pooling attention module (PDPAM), which is achieved through the parallel integration of two distinct attention mechanisms. Furthermore, we have individually developed the pyramid pooling attention module (PPAM) and the dual pooling attention module (DPAM). The PPAM emphasizes channel attention, while the DPAM prioritizes spatial attention. This design aims to enhance vehicle information and suppress background interference more effectively. Extensive experiments conducted on the LH-UAV-Vehicle conclusively demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed vehicle detection method. Our code and dataset can be found at https://github.com/yikuizhai/PDPA-PAN.