Deep Learning-Based Defect Detection in Photovoltaic Panels

The defect issues of photovoltaic solar panels are closely related to their efficiency and reliability. To enhance the efficiency and accuracy of defect detection in photovoltaic solar panels, this paper proposes an improved YOLOv8 model for this purpose. The improved C2f module, C2f-MS, is utilized to replace part of the original C2f structure in the model, which not only reduces the computational complexity and parameter count of the model but also enhances the extraction and fusion capabilities of multi-scale features. Additionally, NWD is incorporated into the existing CIOU to improve the detection performance for small targets, making the model's detection capabilities more balanced across various target sizes. Soft-NMS is employed to replace NMS, mitigating the issue of multiple detection boxes for a single target. Experimental results demonstrate that the improved YOLOv8 model achieves enhanced detection accuracy while reducing both the parameter count and computational complexity.