SLFCNet: an ultra-lightweight and efficient strawberry feature classification network.

Background: As modern agricultural technology advances, the automated detection, classification, and harvesting of strawberries have become an inevitable trend. Among these tasks, the classification of strawberries stands as a pivotal juncture. Nevertheless, existing object detection methods struggle with substantial computational demands, high resource utilization, and reduced detection efficiency. These challenges make deployment on edge devices difficult and lead to suboptimal user experiences.

Methods: In this study, we have developed a lightweight model capable of real-time detection and classification of strawberry fruit, named the Strawberry Lightweight Feature Classify Network (SLFCNet). This innovative system incorporates a lightweight encoder and a self-designed feature extraction module called the Combined Convolutional Concatenation and Sequential Convolutional (C3SC). While maintaining model compactness, this architecture significantly enhances its feature decoding capabilities. To evaluate the model's generalization potential, we utilized a high-resolution strawberry dataset collected directly from the fields. By employing image augmentation techniques, we conducted experimental comparisons between manually counted data and the model's inference-based detection and classification results.

Results: The SLFCNet model achieves an average precision of 98.9% in the mAP@0.5 metric, with a precision rate of 94.7% and a recall rate of 93.2%. Notably, SLFCNet features a streamlined design, resulting in a compact model size of only 3.57 MB. On an economical GTX 1080 Ti GPU, the processing time per image is a mere 4.1 ms. This indicates that the model can smoothly run on edge devices, ensuring real-time performance. Thus, it emerges as a novel solution for the automation and management of strawberry harvesting, providing real-time performance and presenting a new solution for the automatic management of strawberry picking.