Algorithm detection performance.

In the field of bearing defect detection, Aiming at the problem of low efficiency in manual inspection and prone to missed detections in scenarios with small target defects, and overlapping targets, an improved YOLOv5-based object detection method is proposed. Firstly, in terms of feature extraction, the C3 modules in the original backbone of YOLOv5 are replaced with the finer-grained Res2Block modules to improve the model’s feature extraction ability. Secondly, in terms of feature fusion, a Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) is added to the original neck of YOLOv5 to enhance the fusion ability of shallow graphic features and deep semantic features. Finally, the performance of the improved YOLOv5 algorithm is validated through ablation experiments and comparative experiments with other defect detection algorithms, including the Small_obj algorithm the existing method of adding a small target detection head for identifying small target defects. The experimental results demonstrate that the improved YOLOv5 algorithm exhibits high mAP and accuracy in bearing defect detection, enabling more precise identification the types of small target defects on bearings in complex scenarios with multiple coexisting defects and overlapping detection targets, thereby providing valuable reference for practical bearing defect detection.