Semi-synthetic Data for Automatic Drone Shadow Detection

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with the problem of shadow detection of UAVs, which impacts their navigation. We propose to generate synthetic images containing shadows in random locations, backgrounds, sizes, and opacities in order to augment our dataset. The generated data is used to train and compare several models to effectively detect, in real-time, UAVs shadows which will help to stabilize their localization and navigation. Deep learning models such as SSD, YOLOv3, and YOLOv5 are tested for the detection part. With our approach, we achieved 99% of the mean average precision when using the YOLOv5.