An Improved YOLO Network for Insulator and Insulator Defect Detection in UAV Images

The power grid plays a vital role in the construction of livelihood projects by transmitting electrical energy. In the event of insulator explosions on power grid towers, these insulators may detach, presenting potential safety risks to transmission lines. The identification of such failures relies on the examination of images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, accurately detecting insulator defects remains challenging, particularly when dealing with variations in size. Existing methods exhibit limited accuracy in detecting small objects. In this paper, we propose a novel detection method that incorporates the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) as an attention mechanism into the backbone of the “you only look once” version 5 (YOLOv5) model. Additionally, we integrate a residual structure into the model to learn additional information and features related to insulators, thereby enhancing detection efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieved F1 scores of 0.87 for insulator detection and 0.89 for insulator defect detection. The improved YOLOv5 network shows promise in detecting insulators and their defects in UAV images.