Nav-YOLO: A Lightweight and Efficient Object Detection Model for Real-Time Indoor Navigation on Mobile Platforms

Precise object detection is fundamental to robust indoor navigation and localization. However, the practical deployment of deep learning-based detectors on mobile platforms is frequently impeded by their extensive parameter counts, substantial computational overhead, and prolonged inference latency, rendering them impractical for real-time and GPU-independent applications. To overcome these limitations, this paper presents Nav-YOLO, a highly optimized and lightweight architecture derived from YOLOv8n, specifically engineered for navigational tasks. The model’s efficiency stems from several key improvements: a ShuffleNetv2-based backbone significantly reduces model parameters; a Slim-Neck structure incorporating GSConv and GSbottleneck modules streamlines the feature fusion process; the VoV-GSCSP hierarchical network aggregates features with minimal computational cost; and a compact detection head is designed using Hybrid Convolutional Transformer Architecture Search (HyCTAS). Furthermore, the adoption of Inner-IoU as the bounding box regression loss accelerates the convergence of the training process. The model’s efficacy is demonstrated through a purpose-built Android application. Experimental evaluations on the VOC2007 and VOC2012 datasets reveal that Nav-YOLO substantially outperforms the baseline YOLOv8n, achieving mAP50 improvements of 10.3% and 5.0%, respectively, while maintaining a comparable parameter footprint. Consequently, Nav-YOLO demonstrates a superior balance of accuracy, model compactness, and inference speed, presenting a compelling alternative to existing object detection algorithms for mobile systems.