Keyline Detection with YOLO: Runway Perception for Vision-Based Aircraft Landing

Abstract

Modern object detectors can predict keypoints as per-object geometric features, but keypoints are inherently vulnerable to occlusion and truncation. Object edges can provide complementary information, often remaining observable even when partially occluded or when their defining endpoints leave the field of view. We therefore introduce object keyline detection, the task of predicting a fixed, semantically ordered set of infinite lines per object instance. Unlike the outputs of general line-segment detectors, each keyline is associated with an object instance and identified by a semantic index, providing a line-level analog of keypoints. To solve this task, we extend YOLO with keyline prediction parameterized in continuous Hesse-normal form $[ρ,\cosθ,\sinθ]$, and introduce Object Keyline Similarity (OKLS), which serves as an evaluation metric, target assignment signal, and regression loss. We instantiate this formulation on runway perception in vision-based landing, a motivating example containing semantic linear features that remain partially observable throughout the approach. Experiments show that our representation achieves the highest detection accuracy among four evaluated line parameterizations, and keylines integrate directly into standard YOLO heads as additional output channels without degrading keypoint performance or adding meaningful latency.