CGADNet: A Lightweight, Real-Time, and Robust Crosswalk and Guide Arrow Detection Network for Complex Scenes

In the context of edge environments with constrained resources, realizing real-time and robust crosswalk and guide arrow detection poses a significant challenge for autonomous driving systems. This paper proposes a crosswalk and guide arrow detection network (CGADNet), a lightweight visual neural network derived from YOLOv8. Specifically designed for the swift and accurate detection of crosswalks and guide arrows within the field of view of the vehicle, the CGADNet can seamlessly be implemented on the Jetson Orin Nano device to achieve real-time processing. In this study, we incorporated a novel C2f_Van module based on VanillaBlock, employed depth-separable convolution to reduce the parameters efficiently, utilized partial convolution (PConv) for lightweight FasterDetect, and utilized a bounding box regression loss with a dynamic focusing mechanism—WIoUv3—to enhance the detection performance. In complex scenarios, the proposed method in the stability of the [email protected] was maintained, resulting in a 4.1% improvement in the [email protected]:0.95. The network parameters, floating point operations (FLOPs), and weights were reduced by 63.81%, 70.07%, and 63.11%, respectively. Ultimately, a detection speed of 50.35 FPS was achieved on the Jetson Orin Nano. This research provides practical methodologies for deploying crosswalk and guide arrow detection networks on edge computing devices.