Lightweight Underwater Object Detection Algorithm for Embedded Deployment Using Higher-Order Information and Image Enhancement

Underwater object detection is crucial in marine exploration, presenting a challenging problem in computer vision due to factors like light attenuation, scattering, and background interference. Existing underwater object detection models face challenges such as low robustness, extensive computation of model parameters, and a high false detection rate. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a lightweight underwater object detection method integrating deep learning and image enhancement. Firstly, FUnIE-GAN is employed to perform data enhancement to restore the authentic colors of underwater images, and subsequently, the restored images are fed into an enhanced object detection network named YOLOv7-GN proposed in this paper. Secondly, a lightweight higher-order attention layer aggregation network (ACC3-ELAN) is designed to improve the fusion perception of higher-order features in the backbone network. Moreover, the head network is enhanced by leveraging the interaction of multi-scale higher-order information, additionally fusing higher-order semantic information from features at different scales. To further streamline the entire network, we also introduce the AC-ELAN-t module, which is derived from pruning based on ACC3-ELAN. Finally, the algorithm undergoes practical testing on a biomimetic sea flatworm underwater robot. The experimental results on the DUO dataset show that our proposed method improves the performance of object detection in underwater environments. It provides a valuable reference for realizing object detection in underwater embedded devices with great practical potential.