Road Defect Identification and Location Method Based on an Improved ML-YOLO Algorithm

The conventional method for detecting road defects relies heavily on manual inspections, which are often inefficient and struggle with precise defect localization. This paper introduces a novel approach for identifying and locating road defects based on an enhanced ML-YOLO algorithm. By refining the YOLOv8 object detection framework, we optimize both the traditional convolutional layers and the spatial pyramid pooling network. Additionally, we incorporate the Convolutional Block Attention to effectively capture channel and spatial features, along with the Selective Kernel Networks that dynamically adapt to feature extraction across varying scales. An optimized target localization algorithm is proposed to achieve high-precision identification and accurate positioning of road defects. Experimental results indicate that the detection accuracy of the improved ML-YOLO algorithm reaches 0.841, with a recall rate of 0.745 and an average precision of 0.817. Compared to the baseline YOLOv8 model, there is an increase in accuracy by 0.13, a rise in recall rate by 0.117, and an enhancement in average precision by 0.116. After the high detection accuracy of road defects was confirmed, generalization experiments were carried out on the improved ML-YOLO model in the public data set. The experimental results showed that compared with the original YOLOv8n, the average precision and recall rate of all types of ML-YOLO increased by 0.075, 0.121, and 0.035 respectively, indicating robust generalization capabilities. When applied to real-time road monitoring scenarios, this algorithm facilitates precise detection and localization of defects while significantly mitigating traffic accident risks and extending roadway service life. A high detection accuracy of road defects was achieved.