--- comments: true description: Discover YOLO12, featuring groundbreaking attention-centric architecture for state-of-the-art object detection with unmatched accuracy and efficiency. keywords: YOLO12, attention-centric object detection, YOLO series, Ultralytics, computer vision, AI, machine learning, deep learning --- # YOLO12: Attention-Centric Object Detection ## Overview YOLO12 introduces an attention-centric architecture that departs from the traditional CNN-based approaches used in previous YOLO models, yet retains the real-time inference speed essential for many applications. This model achieves state-of-the-art object detection accuracy through novel methodological innovations in attention mechanisms and overall network architecture, while maintaining real-time performance.



Watch: How to Use YOLO12 for Object Detection with the Ultralytics Package | Is YOLO12 Fast or Slow? 🚀

## Key Features - **Area Attention Mechanism**: A new self-attention approach that processes large receptive fields efficiently. It divides [feature maps](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/feature-maps) into _l_ equal-sized regions (defaulting to 4), either horizontally or vertically, avoiding complex operations and maintaining a large effective receptive field. This significantly reduces computational cost compared to standard self-attention. - **Residual Efficient Layer Aggregation Networks (R-ELAN)**: An improved feature aggregation module based on ELAN, designed to address optimization challenges, especially in larger-scale attention-centric models. R-ELAN introduces: - Block-level residual connections with scaling (similar to layer scaling). - A redesigned feature aggregation method creating a bottleneck-like structure. - **Optimized Attention Architecture**: YOLO12 streamlines the standard attention mechanism for greater efficiency and compatibility with the YOLO framework. This includes: - Using FlashAttention to minimize memory access overhead. - Removing positional encoding for a cleaner and faster model. - Adjusting the MLP ratio (from the typical 4 to 1.2 or 2) to better balance computation between attention and feed-forward layers. - Reducing the depth of stacked blocks for improved optimization. - Leveraging convolution operations (where appropriate) for their computational efficiency. - Adding a 7x7 separable convolution (the "position perceiver") to the attention mechanism to implicitly encode positional information. - **Comprehensive Task Support**: YOLO12 supports a range of core computer vision tasks: object detection, [instance segmentation](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/instance-segmentation), [image classification](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/image-classification), pose estimation, and oriented object detection (OBB). - **Enhanced Efficiency**: Achieves higher accuracy with fewer parameters compared to many prior models, demonstrating an improved balance between speed and accuracy. - **Flexible Deployment**: Designed for deployment across diverse platforms, from edge devices to cloud infrastructure. ![YOLO12 comparison visualization](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8009d90f-b43c-4a96-bb89-47ef843e7144) ## Supported Tasks and Modes YOLO12 supports a variety of computer vision tasks. The table below shows task support and the operational modes (Inference, Validation, Training, and Export) enabled for each: | Model Type | Task | Inference | Validation | Training | Export | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | --------- | ---------- | -------- | ------ | | [YOLO12](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/models/12/yolo12.yaml) | [Detection](../tasks/detect.md) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | [YOLO12-seg](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/models/12/yolo12-seg.yaml) | [Segmentation](../tasks/segment.md) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | [YOLO12-pose](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/models/12/yolo12-pose.yaml) | [Pose](../tasks/pose.md) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | [YOLO12-cls](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/models/12/yolo12-cls.yaml) | [Classification](../tasks/classify.md) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | [YOLO12-obb](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/models/12/yolo12-obb.yaml) | [OBB](../tasks/obb.md) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ## Performance Metrics YOLO12 demonstrates significant [accuracy](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/accuracy) improvements across all model scales, with some trade-offs in speed compared to the _fastest_ prior YOLO models. Below are quantitative results for [object detection](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/object-detection) on the COCO validation dataset: ### Detection Performance (COCO val2017) !!! tip "Performance" === "Detection (COCO)" | Model | size
(pixels) | mAPval
50-95 | Speed
CPU ONNX
(ms) | Speed
T4 TensorRT
(ms) | params
(M) | FLOPs
(B) | Comparison
(mAP/Speed) | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------- | -------------------- | ------------------------------ | --------------------------------- | ------------------ | ----------------- | ------------------------------ | | [YOLO12n](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases/download/v8.3.0/yolo12n.pt) | 640 | 40.6 | - | 1.64 | 2.6 | 6.5 | +2.1%/-9% (vs. YOLOv10n) | | [YOLO12s](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases/download/v8.3.0/yolo12s.pt) | 640 | 48.0 | - | 2.61 | 9.3 | 21.4 | +0.1%/+42% (vs. RT-DETRv2) | | [YOLO12m](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases/download/v8.3.0/yolo12m.pt) | 640 | 52.5 | - | 4.86 | 20.2 | 67.5 | +1.0%/-3% (vs. YOLO11m) | | [YOLO12l](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases/download/v8.3.0/yolo12l.pt) | 640 | 53.7 | - | 6.77 | 26.4 | 88.9 | +0.4%/-8% (vs. YOLO11l) | | [YOLO12x](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases/download/v8.3.0/yolo12x.pt) | 640 | 55.2 | - | 11.79 | 59.1 | 199.0 | +0.6%/-4% (vs. YOLO11x) | - Inference speed measured on an NVIDIA T4 GPU with TensorRT FP16 [precision](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/precision). - Comparisons show the relative improvement in mAP and the percentage change in speed (positive indicates faster; negative indicates slower). Comparisons are made against published results for YOLOv10, YOLO11, and RT-DETR where available. ## Usage Examples This section provides examples for training and inference with YOLO12. For more comprehensive documentation on these and other modes (including [Validation](../modes/val.md) and [Export](../modes/export.md)), consult the dedicated [Predict](../modes/predict.md) and [Train](../modes/train.md) pages. The examples below focus on YOLO12 [Detect](../tasks/detect.md) models (for object detection). For other supported tasks (segmentation, classification, oriented object detection, and pose estimation), refer to the respective task-specific documentation: [Segment](../tasks/segment.md), [Classify](../tasks/classify.md), [OBB](../tasks/obb.md), and [Pose](../tasks/pose.md). !!! example === "Python" Pretrained `*.pt` models (using [PyTorch](https://pytorch.org/)) and configuration `*.yaml` files can be passed to the `YOLO()` class to create a model instance in Python: ```python from ultralytics import YOLO # Load a COCO-pretrained YOLO12n model model = YOLO("yolo12n.pt") # Train the model on the COCO8 example dataset for 100 epochs results = model.train(data="coco8.yaml", epochs=100, imgsz=640) # Run inference with the YOLO12n model on the 'bus.jpg' image results = model("path/to/bus.jpg") ``` === "CLI" Command Line Interface (CLI) commands are also available: ```bash # Load a COCO-pretrained YOLO12n model and train on the COCO8 example dataset for 100 epochs yolo train model=yolo12n.pt data=coco8.yaml epochs=100 imgsz=640 # Load a COCO-pretrained YOLO12n model and run inference on the 'bus.jpg' image yolo predict model=yolo12n.pt source=path/to/bus.jpg ``` ## Key Improvements 1. **Enhanced [Feature Extraction](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/feature-extraction)**: - **Area Attention**: Efficiently handles large [receptive fields](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/receptive-field), reducing computational cost. - **Optimized Balance**: Improved balance between attention and feed-forward network computations. - **R-ELAN**: Enhances feature aggregation using the R-ELAN architecture. 2. **Optimization Innovations**: - **Residual Connections**: Introduces residual connections with scaling to stabilize training, especially in larger models. - **Refined Feature Integration**: Implements an improved method for feature integration within R-ELAN. - **FlashAttention**: Incorporates FlashAttention to reduce memory access overhead. 3. **Architectural Efficiency**: - **Reduced Parameters**: Achieves a lower parameter count while maintaining or improving accuracy compared to many previous models. - **Streamlined Attention**: Uses a simplified attention implementation, avoiding positional encoding. - **Optimized MLP Ratios**: Adjusts MLP ratios to more effectively allocate computational resources. ## Requirements The Ultralytics YOLO12 implementation, by default, _does not require_ FlashAttention. However, FlashAttention can be optionally compiled and used with YOLO12. To compile FlashAttention, one of the following NVIDIA GPUs is needed: - [Turing GPUs]() (e.g., T4, Quadro RTX series) - [Ampere GPUs]() (e.g., RTX30 series, A30/40/100) - [Ada Lovelace GPUs](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/ada-lovelace-architecture/) (e.g., RTX40 series) - [Hopper GPUs](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/technologies/hopper-architecture/) (e.g., H100/H200) ## Citations and Acknowledgements If you use YOLO12 in your research, please cite the original work by [University at Buffalo](https://www.buffalo.edu/) and the [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://english.ucas.ac.cn/): !!! quote "" === "BibTeX" ```bibtex @article{tian2025yolov12, title={YOLOv12: Attention-Centric Real-Time Object Detectors}, author={Tian, Yunjie and Ye, Qixiang and Doermann, David}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.12524}, year={2025} } @software{yolo12, author = {Tian, Yunjie and Ye, Qixiang and Doermann, David}, title = {YOLOv12: Attention-Centric Real-Time Object Detectors}, year = {2025}, url = {https://github.com/sunsmarterjie/yolov12}, license = {AGPL-3.0} } ``` ## FAQ ### How does YOLO12 achieve real-time object detection while maintaining high accuracy? YOLO12 incorporates several key innovations to balance speed and accuracy. The Area [Attention mechanism](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/attention-mechanism) efficiently processes large receptive fields, reducing computational cost compared to standard self-attention. The Residual Efficient Layer Aggregation Networks (R-ELAN) improve feature aggregation, addressing optimization challenges in larger attention-centric models. Optimized Attention Architecture, including the use of FlashAttention and removal of positional encoding, further enhances efficiency. These features allow YOLO12 to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy while maintaining the real-time inference speed crucial for many applications. ### What [computer vision](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/computer-vision-cv) tasks does YOLO12 support? YOLO12 is a versatile model that supports a wide range of core computer vision tasks. It excels in object [detection](../tasks/detect.md), instance [segmentation](../tasks/segment.md), image [classification](../tasks/classify.md), [pose estimation](../tasks/pose.md), and oriented object detection (OBB) ([see details](../tasks/obb.md)). This comprehensive task support makes YOLO12 a powerful tool for diverse applications, from [robotics](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/robotics) and autonomous driving to medical imaging and industrial inspection. Each of these tasks can be performed in Inference, Validation, Training, and Export modes. ### How does YOLO12 compare to other YOLO models and competitors like RT-DETR? YOLO12 demonstrates significant accuracy improvements across all model scales compared to prior YOLO models like YOLOv10 and YOLO11, with some trade-offs in speed compared to the _fastest_ prior models. For example, YOLO12n achieves a +2.1% mAP improvement over YOLOv10n and +1.2% over YOLO11n on the COCO val2017 dataset. Compared to models like [RT-DETR](https://docs.ultralytics.com/models/rtdetr/), YOLO12s offers a +1.5% mAP improvement and a substantial +42% speed increase. These metrics highlight YOLO12's strong balance between accuracy and efficiency. See the [performance metrics section](#performance-metrics) for detailed comparisons. ### What are the hardware requirements for running YOLO12, especially for using FlashAttention? By default, the Ultralytics YOLO12 implementation does _not_ require FlashAttention. However, FlashAttention can be optionally compiled and used with YOLO12 to minimize memory access overhead. To compile FlashAttention, one of the following NVIDIA GPUs is needed: Turing GPUs (e.g., T4, Quadro RTX series), Ampere GPUs (e.g., RTX30 series, A30/40/100), Ada Lovelace GPUs (e.g., RTX40 series), or Hopper GPUs (e.g., H100/H200). This flexibility allows users to leverage FlashAttention's benefits when hardware resources permit. ### Where can I find usage examples and more detailed documentation for YOLO12? This page provides basic [usage examples](#usage-examples) for training and inference. For comprehensive documentation on these and other modes, including [Validation](../modes/val.md) and [Export](../modes/export.md), consult the dedicated [Predict](../modes/predict.md) and [Train](../modes/train.md) pages. For task-specific information (segmentation, classification, oriented object detection, and pose estimation), refer to the respective documentation: [Segment](../tasks/segment.md), [Classify](../tasks/classify.md), [OBB](../tasks/obb.md), and [Pose](../tasks/pose.md). These resources provide in-depth guidance for effectively utilizing YOLO12 in various scenarios.