MS-YOLO: Infrared Object Detection for Edge Deployment via MobileNetV4 and SlideLoss

Abstract: Infrared imaging has emerged as a robust solution for urban object detection under low-light and adverse weather conditions, offering significant advantages over traditional visible-light cameras. However, challenges such as class imbalance, thermal noise, and computational constraints can significantly hinder model performance in practical settings. To address these issues, we evaluate multiple YOLO variants on the FLIR ADAS V2 dataset, ultimately selecting YOLOv8 as our baseline due to its balanced accuracy and efficiency. Building on this foundation, we present \texttt{MS-YOLO} (\textbf{M}obileNetv4 and \textbf{S}lideLoss based on YOLO), which replaces YOLOv8's CSPDarknet backbone with the more efficient MobileNetV4, reducing computational overhead by \textbf{1.5%} while sustaining high accuracy. In addition, we introduce \emph{SlideLoss}, a novel loss function that dynamically emphasizes under-represented and occluded samples, boosting precision without sacrificing recall. Experiments on the FLIR ADAS V2 benchmark show that \texttt{MS-YOLO} attains competitive mAP and superior precision while operating at only \textbf{6.7 GFLOPs}. These results demonstrate that \texttt{MS-YOLO} effectively addresses the dual challenge of maintaining high detection quality while minimizing computational costs, making it well-suited for real-time edge deployment in urban environments.