{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,18]],"date-time":"2026-08-18T05:14:41Z","timestamp":1787030081520,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":28,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,12]],"date-time":"2025-09-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1757635200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangxi Province, China","award":["AD23026273"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["AD23026273"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangxi Province, China","award":["202410602080"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410602080"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangxi Province, China","award":["2021ITA10018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021ITA10018"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangxi Province, China","award":["2022GXZDSY101"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022GXZDSY101"]}]},{"name":"2024 College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (Dachuang)","award":["AD23026273"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["AD23026273"]}]},{"name":"2024 College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (Dachuang)","award":["202410602080"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410602080"]}]},{"name":"2024 College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (Dachuang)","award":["2021ITA10018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021ITA10018"]}]},{"name":"2024 College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (Dachuang)","award":["2022GXZDSY101"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022GXZDSY101"]}]},{"name":"industry-university-research innovation fund projects of China University in 2021","award":["AD23026273"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["AD23026273"]}]},{"name":"industry-university-research innovation fund projects of China University in 2021","award":["202410602080"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410602080"]}]},{"name":"industry-university-research innovation fund projects of China University in 2021","award":["2021ITA10018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021ITA10018"]}]},{"name":"industry-university-research innovation fund projects of China University in 2021","award":["2022GXZDSY101"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022GXZDSY101"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of AI and Information Processing","award":["AD23026273"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["AD23026273"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of AI and Information Processing","award":["202410602080"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410602080"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of AI and Information Processing","award":["2021ITA10018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021ITA10018"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of AI and Information Processing","award":["2022GXZDSY101"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022GXZDSY101"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Symmetry"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Low-altitude UAVs pose increasing security concerns due to their small sizes, high mobility, and low observability. Detecting such targets in cluttered environments remains challenging due to strong background interference and significant scale variations. To address these issues, we propose an efficient and accurate multi-scale detection framework based on YOLO11, specifically tailored for small UAVs in cluttered scenes. The framework incorporates three core modules: C3K2-FB to enhance feature extraction and suppress background noise, MS_FPN for edge-aware multi-scale feature fusion, and RFCBAM to jointly leverage spatial and channel attention for improved focus on discriminative regions. Extensive experiments on the DeTFly dataset show that our method achieves 94.4% mAP@0.5 and 60.9% mAP@0.5:0.95, outperforming state-of-the-art models including YOLO11n, YOLOv10n, and RT-DETR-L in both accuracy and robustness. These results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for real-world UAV detection tasks involving small-scale targets in cluttered environments.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/sym17091519","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,12]],"date-time":"2025-09-12T07:52:28Z","timestamp":1757663548000},"page":"1519","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["A YOLO-Based Multi-Scale and Small Object Detection Framework for Low-Altitude UAVs in Cluttered Scenes"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Zhi","family":"Yang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1576-0793","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Rijun","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"},{"name":"Guangxi University Engineering Research Center of Agricultural and Forestry Intelligent Equipment Technology, Guilin 546300, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wenjin","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Keer","family":"Du","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhigong","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"},{"name":"Guangxi University Engineering Research Center of Agricultural and Forestry Intelligent Equipment Technology, Guilin 546300, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yu","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Teachers College for Vocational Education, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004, China"},{"name":"Guangxi University Engineering Research Center of Agricultural and Forestry Intelligent Equipment Technology, Guilin 546300, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"19813","DOI":"10.1007\/s11042-021-11242-y","article-title":"Edge device based military vehicle detection and classification from UAV","volume":"81","author":"Gupta","year":"2022","journal-title":"Multimed. 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