YOLO-Fusion and Internet of Things: Advancing object detection in smart transportation

In intelligent transportation systems, traditional object detection algorithms struggle to handle complex environments and varying lighting conditions, particularly when detecting small targets and processing multimodal data. Furthermore, existing IoT frameworks are limited in their efficiency for real-time data collection and processing, leading to data transmission delays and increased resource consumption, which constrains the overall performance of intelligent transportation systems. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel deep learning model, YOLO-Fusion. Based on the YOLOv8 architecture, this model innovatively integrates infrared and visible-light images, utilizing FusionAttention and Dynamic Fusion modules to optimize the fusion of multimodal information. To further enhance detection performance, this paper designs a Fusion-Dynamic Loss, improving the model’s performance in complex intelligent transportation scenarios. To support the efficient operation of YOLO-Fusion, this paper also introduces an IoT framework that uses intelligent sensors and edge computing technology to achieve real-time collection, transmission and processing of traffic data, significantly improving data timeliness and accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that YOLO-Fusion significantly outperforms traditional methods on the DroneVehicle and FLIR datasets, showcasing its broad application potential in intelligent traffic monitoring and management.