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An additive feature fusion attention based on YOLO network for aircraft skin damage detection

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Abstract

Aircraft skin damage detection is crucial for ensuring flight safety. This article presents an enhanced object detection algorithm tailored for scenarios with low image complexity. Initially, considering the low image complexity inherent in aircraft skin damage data, an additive feature fusion attention mechanism is proposed to enhance the YOLOv7 neck feature fusion approach, aiming at diminishing the computational and parametric loads of the model. Secondly, the Inner-CIoU loss function is enhanced and the dynamic Inner-CIoU loss function is introduced to substitute the original CIoU loss function in YOLOv7. Subsequently, to validate the proposed method, an Aircraft Skin Damage Dataset encompassing five types of damage, with image backgrounds solely comprising the aircraft skin, is generated. Lastly, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed additive feature fusion attention mechanism, tailored for scenarios like Aircraft Skin Damage Dataset with low image complexity, significantly reduces the model parameters without compromising model accuracy. Compared to the YOLOv7, the proposed method improves the detection accuracy by 1.6% and reduces the number of parameters by 19.4%; the enhanced YOLOv7 model is compared with mainstream object detection models to illustrate the superiority of the improved algorithm. The Pascal VOC2007 Database and Aluminum Profile Surface Detection Database are selected as control groups, which are used to further validate the correctness of the proposed theory, namely the additive feature fusion attention mechanism.

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No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52375557, 62173331, U2333205), Science and Technology Program of Tianjin (24JCYBJC00160, 23JCYBJC00060), Foundation of Tianjin educational committee (2023KJ222), The Basic Science-research Funds of National University (3122023PY06, 3122023044, 3122024052), Civil Aviation University of China Research Innovation Project for Postgraduate Students (2022YJS051).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Aeronautical Engineering, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, China

    Jun Wu, Yajing Zhang & Tengfei Shan

  2. College of Electronic Information and Automation, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, China

    Zhiwei Xing, Jiusheng Chen & Runxia Guo

Authors
  1. Jun Wu
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  2. Yajing Zhang
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  4. Zhiwei Xing
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Contributions

Jun Wu was involved in conceptualization, resources, writing—Review & eEditing, investigation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Yajing Zhang was involved in software, formal analysis, data curation, writing—original draft. Tengfei Shan was involved in conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, data Curation, visualization. Zhiwei Xing was involved in resources, funding acquisition. Jiusheng Chen was involved in resources, funding acquisition. Runxia Guo was involved in resources, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Jun Wu.

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Wu, J., Zhang, Y., Shan, T. et al. An additive feature fusion attention based on YOLO network for aircraft skin damage detection. J Supercomput 81, 627 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-025-07148-3

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