Research on a Photovoltaic Panel Dust Detection Algorithm Based on 3D Data Generation

With the rapid advancements in AI technology, UAV-based inspection has become a mainstream method for intelligent maintenance of PV power stations. To address limitations in accuracy and data acquisition, this paper presents a defect detection algorithm for PV panels based on an enhanced YOLOv8 model. The PV panel dust dataset is manually extended using 3D modeling technology, which significantly improves the model’s ability to generalize and detect fine dust particles in complex environments. SENetV2 is introduced to improve the model’s perception of dust features in cluttered backgrounds. AKConv replaces traditional convolution in the neck network, allowing for more flexible and accurate feature extraction through arbitrary kernel parameters and sampling shapes. Additionally, a DySample dynamic upsampler accelerates processing by 8.73%, improving the frame rate from 87.58 FPS to 95.23 FPS while maintaining efficiency. Experimental results show that the 3D image expansion method contributes to a 4.6% increase in detection accuracy, an 8.4% improvement in recall, a 5.7% increase in mAP@50, and a 15.1% improvement in mAP@50-95 compared to the original YOLOv8. The expanded dataset and enhanced model demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed approach.