Lightweight Improvements to the Pomelo Image Segmentation Method for Yolov8n-seg

Instance segmentation in agricultural robotics requires a balance between real-time performance and accuracy. This study proposes a lightweight pomelo image segmentation method based on the YOLOv8n-seg model integrated with the RepGhost module. A pomelo dataset consisting of 5076 samples was constructed through systematic image acquisition, annotation, and data augmentation. The RepGhost architecture was incorporated into the C2f module of the YOLOv8-seg backbone network to enhance feature reuse capabilities while reducing computational complexity. Experimental results demonstrate that the YOLOv8-seg-RepGhost model enhances efficiency without compromising accuracy: parameter count is reduced by 16.5% (from 3.41 M to 2.84 M), computational load decreases by 14.8% (from 12.8 GFLOPs to 10.9 GFLOPs), and inference time is shortened by 6.3% (to 15 ms). The model maintains excellent detection performance with bounding box mAP50 at 97.75% and mask mAP50 at 97.51%. The research achieves both high segmentation efficiency and detection accuracy, offering core support for developing visual systems in harvesting robots and providing an effective solution for deep learning-based fruit target recognition and automated harvesting applications.