Abstract
In the complex environment of fully mechanized mining faces, the current object detection algorithms face significant challenges in achieving optimal accuracy and real-time detection of mine personnel and safety helmets. This difficulty arises from factors such as uneven lighting conditions and equipment obstructions, which often lead to missed detections. Consequently, these limitations pose a considerable challenge to effective mine safety management. This article presents an enhanced algorithm based on YOLOv11n, referred to as GCB-YOLOv11. The proposed improvements are realized through three key aspects: Firstly, the traditional convolution is replaced with GSConv, which significantly enhances feature extraction capabilities while simultaneously reducing computational costs. Secondly, a novel C3K2_FE module was designed that integrates Faster_block and ECA attention mechanisms. This design aims to improve detection accuracy while also accelerating detection speed. Finally, the introduction of the Bi FPN mechanism in the Neck section optimizes the efficiency of multi-scale feature fusion and addresses issues related to feature loss and redundancy. The experimental results demonstrate that GCB-YOLOv11 exhibits strong performance on the dataset concerning mine personnel and safety helmets, achieving a mean average precision of 93.6%. Additionally, the frames per second reached 90.3 f·s(-1), representing increases of 3.3% and 9.4%, respectively, compared to the baseline model. In addition, when compared to models such as YOLOv5s, YOLOv8s, YOLOv3 Tiny, Fast R-CNN, and RT-DETR, GCB-YOLOv11 demonstrates superior performance in both detection accuracy and model complexity. This highlights its advantages in mining environments and offers a viable technical solution for enhancing the safety of mine personnel.