Deep Neural Networks for Object Detection in Satellite Imagery

Abstract: With the development of small satellites it has become easier and cheaper to deploy satellites for earth observation from space. While optical sensors capture high-resolution data, this data is traditionally sent to earth for analysis which puts a high constraint on the data link and increases the time for making data based decisions. This thesis explores the possibilities of deploying an AI model in small satellites for detecting objects in satellite imagery and therefore reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The neural network model YOLOv8 was trained on the xView and DIOR dataset and evaluated in a hardware restricted execution environment. The model achieved a mAP50 of 0.66 and could process satellite images at a speed of 309m2/s.