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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W11-2025-127-2025</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Real time solar panels heat point’s detection with EDGE ViTs using thermal drone imagery</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jabrane</surname>
<given-names>Mouad</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Sebari</surname>
<given-names>Imane</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ait El Kadi</surname>
<given-names>Kenza</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Research Unit of Geospatial Technologies for a Smart Decision, IAV Hassan II, Rabat 10101, Morocco</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>30</day>
<month>10</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-2/W11-2025</volume>
<fpage>127</fpage>
<lpage>132</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Mouad Jabrane et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-2-W11-2025/127/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W11-2025-127-2025.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-2-W11-2025/127/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W11-2025-127-2025.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-2-W11-2025/127/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W11-2025-127-2025.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-2-W11-2025/127/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W11-2025-127-2025.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The use of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for high-resolution Earth Observation is revolutionizing large-scale Solar Farms inspection. However, the critical bottleneck remains the real-time, onboard analysis of thermal data. This paper introduces EDGE-SFOS v1.0, a novel Geo EDGE-AI framework that transforms the UAV into an intelligent agent capable of autonomous, in-situ fault detection. The core scientific contribution is a definitive, real-world performance comparison of two state-of-the-art tiny models deployed on our embedded system. We evaluate a modern transformer-based model, RF-DETR, against a leading-edge convolutional neural network, YOLO 12. The results are conclusive. Deployed via the EDGE-SFOS platform, RF-DETR delivered superior performance, achieving a significantly higher detection accuracy (0.58 vs. 0.52 mAP) and proving to be 24% faster (4.96 ms vs. 6.13 ms inference time) than its YOLO 12 counterpart. This work establishes that for demanding Geo EDGE-AI tasks, modern transformer architectures can surpass top-tier convolutional models in both accuracy and speed on resource-constrained hardware, providing a validated blueprint for the next generation of intelligent field robotics.</p>
</abstract>
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</article-meta>
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