{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/yolo5face-why-reinventing-a-face-detector","title":"YOLO5Face: Why Reinventing a Face Detector","arxiv_id":"2105.12931","date":"2021-05-27","proceeding":null,"authors":["Delong Qi","Weijun Tan","Qi Yao","Jingfeng Liu"],"abstract":"Tremendous progress has been made on face detection in recent years using convolutional neural networks. While many face detectors use designs designated for detecting faces, we treat face detection as a generic object detection task. We implement a face detector based on the YOLOv5 object detector and call it YOLO5Face. We make a few key modifications to the YOLOv5 and optimize it for face detection. These modifications include adding a five-point landmark regression head, using a stem block at the input of the backbone, using smaller-size kernels in the SPP, and adding a P6 output in the PAN block. We design detectors of different model sizes, from an extra-large model to achieve the best performance to a super small model for real-time detection on an embedded or mobile device. Experiment results on the WiderFace dataset show that on VGA images, our face detectors can achieve state-of-the-art performance in almost all the Easy, Medium, and Hard subsets, exceeding the more complex designated face detectors. The code is available at \\url{https://github.com/deepcam-cn/yolov5-face}","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.12931v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.12931v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"yolo5face-why-reinventing-a-face-detector","repo_url":"https://github.com/deepcam-cn/yolov5-face","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null},{"paper_slug":"yolo5face-why-reinventing-a-face-detector","repo_url":"https://github.com/dooleys/robustness","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"GPL-3.0"}},{"paper_slug":"yolo5face-why-reinventing-a-face-detector","repo_url":"https://github.com/code-implementation1/Code9/tree/main/YOLOv5","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"mindspore","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"face-detection","task_name":"Face Detection"},{"task_slug":"object-detection","task_name":"Object Detection"},{"task_slug":"object-detection-1","task_name":"object-detection"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-easy","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Easy)","model":"YOLOv5x6","rank_in_archive_order":3,"of":27,"metrics":{"AP":"0.9667"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-easy","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Easy)","model":"YOLOv5m6","rank_in_archive_order":5,"of":27,"metrics":{"AP":"0.9638"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-easy","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Easy)","model":"YOLOv5s6","rank_in_archive_order":13,"of":27,"metrics":{"AP":"0.953"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-easy","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Easy)","model":"YOLOv5s","rank_in_archive_order":18,"of":27,"metrics":{"AP":"0.9433"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-hard","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Hard)","model":"YOLOv5x6","rank_in_archive_order":17,"of":40,"metrics":{"AP":"0.8655"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-hard","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Hard)","model":"YOLOv5l6","rank_in_archive_order":18,"of":40,"metrics":{"AP":"0.8588"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-hard","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Hard)","model":"YOLOv5m","rank_in_archive_order":21,"of":40,"metrics":{"AP":"0.852"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-hard","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Hard)","model":"YOLOv5l","rank_in_archive_order":23,"of":40,"metrics":{"AP":"0.845"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-hard","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Hard)","model":"YOLOv5s","rank_in_archive_order":26,"of":40,"metrics":{"AP":"0.828"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-medium","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Medium)","model":"YOLOv5x6","rank_in_archive_order":6,"of":37,"metrics":{"AP":"0.9508"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-medium","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Medium)","model":"YOLOv5l6","rank_in_archive_order":9,"of":37,"metrics":{"AP":"0.949"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-medium","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Medium)","model":"YOLOv5s6","rank_in_archive_order":13,"of":37,"metrics":{"AP":"0.944"},"uses_additional_data":false},{"leaderboard":"/sota/face-detection-on-wider-face-medium","task":"Face Detection","dataset":"WIDER Face (Medium)","model":"YOLOv5s","rank_in_archive_order":20,"of":37,"metrics":{"AP":"0.9261"},"uses_additional_data":false}],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2105.12931","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2105.12931","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2105.12931"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/code-implementation1/Code9/tree/main/YOLOv5","reach":null},{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/dooleys/robustness","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"GPL-3.0"}},{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/deepcam-cn/yolov5-face","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_fixture":2},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":2,"ran":2,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":2,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"445b8340051241bc","entry":"dynamic_resize","repo":"deepcam-cn/yolov5-face","repo_kind":"official","path":"test_widerface.py","file_url":"https://github.com/deepcam-cn/yolov5-face/blob/HEAD/test_widerface.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"GPL-3.0","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"445b8340051241bc"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"6299962009a1327a","entry":"scale_coords_landmarks","repo":"deepcam-cn/yolov5-face","repo_kind":"official","path":"detect_face.py","file_url":"https://github.com/deepcam-cn/yolov5-face/blob/HEAD/detect_face.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":true,"licence":"GPL-3.0","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"6299962009a1327a"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}