YOLO-RDP: Lightweight Steel Defect Detection through Improved YOLOv7-Tiny and Model Pruning

During steel manufacturing, surface defects such as scratches, scale, and oxidation can compromise product quality and safety. Detecting these defects accurately is critical for production efficiency and product integrity. However, current target detection algorithms are often too resource-intensive for deployment on edge devices with limited computing resources. To address this challenge, we propose YOLO-RDP, an enhanced YOLOv7-tiny model. YOLO-RDP integrates RexNet, a lightweight network, for feature extraction, and employs GSConv and VOV-GSCSP modules to enhance the network’s neck layer, reducing parameter count and computational complexity. Additionally, we designed a dual-headed object detection head called DdyHead with a symmetric structure, composed of two complementary object detection heads, greatly enhancing the model’s ability to recognize minor defects. Further model optimization through pruning achieves additional lightweighting. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our model, with improvements in mAP values of 3.7% and 3.5% on the NEU-DET and GC10-DET datasets, respectively, alongside reductions in parameter count and computation by 40% and 30%, and 25% and 24%, respectively.