DAMO-YOLO vs. YOLOv10: A Detailed Technical Comparison for Object Detection
Choosing the optimal object detection model is crucial for computer vision applications, with models differing significantly in accuracy, speed, and efficiency. This page offers a detailed technical comparison between DAMO-YOLO, developed by Alibaba Group, and YOLOv10, the latest evolution in the YOLO series integrated within the Ultralytics ecosystem. We will explore their architectures, performance benchmarks, and suitable applications to guide your model selection process.
DAMO-YOLO
Authors: Xianzhe Xu, Yiqi Jiang, Weihua Chen, Yilun Huang, Yuan Zhang, and Xiuyu Sun
Organization: Alibaba Group
Date: 2022-11-23
Arxiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15444v2
GitHub Link: https://github.com/tinyvision/DAMO-YOLO
Docs Link: https://github.com/tinyvision/DAMO-YOLO/blob/master/README.md
DAMO-YOLO is an object detection model developed by the Alibaba Group, focusing on achieving a balance between high accuracy and efficient inference. It incorporates several novel techniques in its architecture.
Architecture and Key Features
DAMO-YOLO introduces several innovative components aimed at enhancing performance and efficiency:
- NAS Backbones: Utilizes Neural Architecture Search (NAS) to optimize the backbone network for feature extraction.
- Efficient RepGFPN: Employs a Reparameterized Gradient Feature Pyramid Network (RepGFPN) for improved feature fusion.
- ZeroHead: A decoupled detection head designed to minimize computational overhead.
- AlignedOTA: Features an Aligned Optimal Transport Assignment strategy for better label assignment during training.
- Distillation Enhancement: Incorporates knowledge distillation techniques to boost performance.
Performance Metrics
DAMO-YOLO offers different model sizes (tiny, small, medium, large), achieving competitive mAP scores on datasets like COCO. For instance, DAMO-YOLOl reaches a mAPval 50-95 of 50.8. The models are designed for efficient inference, particularly the smaller variants.
Strengths
- High Accuracy: Achieves strong mAP scores, indicating excellent detection capabilities.
- Efficient Architecture: Incorporates techniques like NAS backbones and ZeroHead for computational efficiency.
- Innovative Techniques: Uses novel methods like AlignedOTA and RepGFPN.
Weaknesses
- Limited Integration: May require more effort to integrate into existing workflows compared to models within the Ultralytics ecosystem.
- Documentation and Support: Community support and documentation might be less extensive than the widely adopted YOLO series.
Ideal Use Cases
DAMO-YOLO is well-suited for applications where high detection accuracy is paramount:
- High-precision applications: Detailed image analysis, medical imaging, scientific research.
- Complex Scenarios: Environments with occluded objects or requiring detailed scene understanding.
- Research: Exploring advanced object detection architectures.
YOLOv10
Authors: Ao Wang, Hui Chen, Lihao Liu, et al.
Organization: Tsinghua University
Date: 2024-05-23
Arxiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14458
GitHub Link: https://github.com/THU-MIG/yolov10
Docs Link: https://docs.ultralytics.com/models/yolov10/
YOLOv10 represents the latest advancements in the YOLO family, focusing on real-time end-to-end object detection. Developed by researchers at Tsinghua University and integrated into the Ultralytics framework, it emphasizes efficiency and speed, notably by eliminating the need for Non-Maximum Suppression (NMS) during inference.
Architecture and Key Features
YOLOv10 introduces significant improvements for efficiency and accuracy:
- NMS-Free Training: Employs consistent dual assignments, removing the NMS post-processing step, reducing latency and simplifying deployment.
- Holistic Efficiency-Accuracy Driven Design: Optimizes various model components comprehensively for both speed and performance, reducing computational redundancy.
- Lightweight Architecture: Features refinements like a lightweight classification head and efficient downsampling, enhancing parameter efficiency and inference speed.
Performance Metrics
YOLOv10 excels in speed and accuracy across its range of models (N, S, M, B, L, X).
- mAP: Achieves state-of-the-art mAP among real-time detectors, with YOLOv10x reaching 54.4 mAPval 50-95.
- Inference Speed: Demonstrates impressive speeds, e.g., YOLOv10n achieves 1.56ms on T4 TensorRT.
- Model Size: Offers models from the exceptionally small YOLOv10n (2.3M parameters) to the high-accuracy YOLOv10x (56.9M parameters).
Strengths
- Exceptional Speed and Efficiency: Highly optimized for real-time inference with minimal latency, ideal for resource-constrained environments.
- NMS-Free Inference: Simplifies the deployment pipeline and reduces inference time.
- Versatile Model Range: Caters to diverse computational budgets, from edge devices to powerful servers.
- Ease of Use: Seamless integration with the Ultralytics ecosystem, including the user-friendly Python package and Ultralytics HUB, backed by extensive documentation and a strong community.
- Well-Maintained Ecosystem: Benefits from active development, frequent updates, and readily available pre-trained weights, ensuring reliability and access to the latest features.
- Performance Balance: Provides a strong trade-off between speed and accuracy suitable for various real-world scenarios.
- Training Efficiency: Offers efficient training processes and lower memory requirements compared to more complex architectures like transformers.
Weaknesses
- Relatively New Model: As a newer model, the community base and number of real-world deployment examples are still growing compared to established models like Ultralytics YOLOv8.
- Potential Accuracy Trade-off: While highly accurate, the extreme focus on efficiency in smaller variants might involve slight trade-offs in absolute accuracy for specific, complex tasks.
Ideal Use Cases
YOLOv10 is ideally suited for applications where real-time performance and efficiency are critical:
- Edge AI Applications: Deployment on devices like Raspberry Pi and NVIDIA Jetson.
- High-Throughput Video Processing: Analyzing video streams rapidly for applications like traffic monitoring or queue management.
- Mobile and Web Deployments: Enabling low-latency object detection in user-facing applications.
Model | size (pixels) |
mAPval 50-95 |
Speed CPU ONNX (ms) |
Speed T4 TensorRT10 (ms) |
params (M) |
FLOPs (B) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
DAMO-YOLOt | 640 | 42.0 | - | 2.32 | 8.5 | 18.1 |
DAMO-YOLOs | 640 | 46.0 | - | 3.45 | 16.3 | 37.8 |
DAMO-YOLOm | 640 | 49.2 | - | 5.09 | 28.2 | 61.8 |
DAMO-YOLOl | 640 | 50.8 | - | 7.18 | 42.1 | 97.3 |
YOLOv10n | 640 | 39.5 | - | 1.56 | 2.3 | 6.7 |
YOLOv10s | 640 | 46.7 | - | 2.66 | 7.2 | 21.6 |
YOLOv10m | 640 | 51.3 | - | 5.48 | 15.4 | 59.1 |
YOLOv10b | 640 | 52.7 | - | 6.54 | 24.4 | 92.0 |
YOLOv10l | 640 | 53.3 | - | 8.33 | 29.5 | 120.3 |
YOLOv10x | 640 | 54.4 | - | 12.2 | 56.9 | 160.4 |
Other Models
Users interested in DAMO-YOLO and YOLOv10 may also find these Ultralytics YOLO models relevant:
- Ultralytics YOLOv8: A highly versatile and widely adopted model known for its excellent balance of speed and accuracy across multiple vision tasks (detection, segmentation, pose, classification). See the YOLOv8 vs. DAMO-YOLO comparison.
- YOLOv9: Introduces innovations like Programmable Gradient Information (PGI) and Generalized Efficient Layer Aggregation Network (GELAN) for enhanced accuracy and efficiency. Check out the YOLOv9 vs. DAMO-YOLO comparison.
- Ultralytics YOLO11: The cutting-edge model focusing on efficiency and speed, incorporating anchor-free detection and optimized architecture. Explore the YOLO11 vs. DAMO-YOLO comparison.
- RT-DETR: A real-time detector leveraging a transformer-based architecture, offering an alternative approach. See the RT-DETR vs. DAMO-YOLO comparison.