Comparison of YOLOv8 Models for Aircraft Detection in Airport Apron Using Digital Image Processing

Airport safety can be improved by efficient air traffic management, which monitors aircraft parking spots and controls their movement into them more efficiently. In addition to emergency situations, it can assist in accurately inspecting airport areas. Management costs can be reduced by reducing the workload of personnel in controlling and helping manage air and ground traffic. This research focuses on comparing the performance of various YOLOv8 models (YOLOv8n, YOLOv8s, YOLOv8m, YOLOv8nl, and YOLOv8nx) in an automated aircraft detection system using digital image processing techniques. The methodology involves collecting a dataset of 1,000 airport apron images with parked aircraft, dividing them into 900 training images and 100 testing images. The YOLOv8 models are trained on the training dataset, and their performance is evaluated on the testing dataset using confusion matrices. Experimental results reveal that YOLOv8nx achieves the highest average aircraft detection performance, with a precision of 0.94, recall of 0.74, and f1-score of 0.83. Additionally, YOLOv8n demonstrates the highest processing speed at 0.95 milliseconds. Consequently, YOLOv8n is suitable for applications requiring high-speed processing, while YOLOv8nx is ideal for tasks demanding the utmost performance efficiency.