Foreign-Object Detection in High-Voltage Transmission Line Based on Improved YOLOv8m
To address low detection accuracy in identifying foreign objects (e.g., balloons, kites, bird nests) on high-voltage transmission lines—caused by severe occlusion, large scale variations, and complex backgrounds—this paper proposes a lightweight and efficient detection method based on an improved YOLOv8m architecture. The method introduces three key innovations: (1) a Global Attention Mechanism (GAM) to enhance perception of occluded targets; (2) SPPCSPC replacing SPPF to improve multi-scale feature fusion efficiency; and (3) a Focal-EIoU loss function to mitigate positive–negative sample imbalance. Evaluated on a real-world dataset collected from Yunnan Power Grid, the proposed model achieves +2.7% mAP₀.₅, +4.0% mAP₀.₅:₀.₉₅, and +6.0% recall over the baseline. These improvements significantly enhance robustness and practicality for detecting small and occluded foreign objects under challenging field conditions.