AMW-YOLOv8n: Road Scene Object Detection Based on an Improved YOLOv8

This study introduces an improved YOLOv8 model tailored for detecting objects in road scenes. To overcome the limitations of standard convolution operations in adapting to varying targets, we introduce Adaptive Kernel Convolution (AKconv). AKconv dynamically adjusts the convolution kernel’s shape and size, enhancing the backbone network’s feature extraction capabilities and improving feature representation across different scales. Additionally, we employ a Multi-Scale Dilated Attention (MSDA) mechanism to focus on key target features, further enhancing feature representation. To address the challenge posed by YOLOv8’s large down sampling factor, which limits the learning of small target features in deeper feature maps, we add a small target detection layer. Finally, to improve model training efficiency, we introduce a regression loss function with a Wise-IoU dynamic non-monotonic focusing mechanism. With these enhancements, our improved YOLOv8 model excels in road scene object detection tasks, achieving a 5.6 percentage point improvement in average precision over the original YOLOv8n on real road datasets.