CBS-YOLOv5: fault detection algorithm of electrolyzer plate with low-resolution infrared images based on improved YOLOv5

Abstract In the process of copper electrorefining, accurate detection of electrode plate faults is extremely challenging due to the low resolution of captured infrared images, significant noise interference, and dense electrode plate arrangements. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an improved YOLOv5-based electrode plate fault detection algorithm called CBS-YOLOv5. This algorithm introduces several innovations over the original YOLOv5, including: the incorporation of coordinate attention to enhance the ability of the feature extraction network to separate target information from noise; the construction of a small object detection module to improve the detection of dense small objects by increasing the resolution of the feature map; the replacement of the traditional path aggregation network with a Bi-directional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) for more flexible multi-scale feature fusion; and the integration of the swin transformer to optimize the cross-stage partial bottleneck structure, significantly enhancing the model’s ability to detect densely packed small objects. Experimental results show that the proposed CBS-YOLOv5 model achieves an accuracy of 88.1%, which is an improvement of 5.7% over the base model. Furthermore, this algorithm demonstrates exceptional detection capabilities for dense small objects in low-resolution infrared images while maintaining real-time detection speed, making it suitable for various complex industrial scenarios, including fault detection in non-ferrous metal electrolysis processes. CBS-YOLOv5 not only improves detection accuracy and robustness but also has broad application prospects, offering a new solution for intelligent manufacturing and industrial inspection.