Real-Time Classification of Chicken Parts in the Packaging Process Using Object Detection Models Based on Deep Learning

Chicken meat plays an important role in the healthy diets of many people and has a large global trade volume. In the chicken meat sector, in some production processes, traditional methods are used. Traditional chicken part sorting methods are often manual and time-consuming, especially during the packaging process. This study aimed to identify and classify the chicken parts for their input during the packaging process with the highest possible accuracy and speed. For this purpose, deep-learning-based object detection models were used. An image dataset was developed for the classification models by collecting the image data of different chicken parts, such as legs, breasts, shanks, wings, and drumsticks. The models were trained by the You Only Look Once version 8 (YOLOv8) algorithm variants and the Real-Time Detection Transformer (RT-DETR) algorithm variants. Then, they were evaluated and compared based on precision, recall, F1-Score, mean average precision (mAP), and Mean Inference Time per frame (MITF) metrics. Based on the obtained results, the YOLOv8s model outperformed the other models developed with other YOLOv8 versions and the RT-DETR algorithm versions by obtaining values of 0.9969, 0.9950, and 0.9807 for the F1-score, mAP@0.5, and mAP@0.5:0.95, respectively. It has been proven suitable for real-time applications with an MITF value of 10.3 ms/image.