UAVDB: Trajectory-Guided Adaptable Bounding Boxes for UAV Detection

Abstract

With the rapid development of drone technology, accurate detection of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has become essential for applications such as surveillance, security, and airspace management. In this paper, we propose a novel trajectory-guided method, the Patch Intensity Convergence (PIC) technique, which generates high-fidelity bounding boxes for UAV detection tasks and no need for the effort required for labeling. The PIC technique forms the foundation for developing UAVDB, a database explicitly created for UAV detection. Unlike existing datasets, which often use low-resolution footage or focus on UAVs in simple backgrounds, UAVDB employs high-resolution video to capture UAVs at various scales, ranging from hundreds of pixels to nearly single-digit sizes. This broad-scale variation enables comprehensive evaluation of detection algorithms across different UAV sizes and distances. Applying the PIC technique, we can also efficiently generate detection datasets from trajectory or positional data, even without size information. We extensively benchmark UAVDB using YOLOv8 series detectors, offering a detailed performance analysis. Our findings highlight UAVDB's potential as a vital database for advancing UAV detection, particularly in high-resolution and long-distance tracking scenarios.