description: Explore Meituan YOLOv6, a top-tier object detector balancing speed and accuracy. Learn about its unique features and performance metrics on Ultralytics Docs.
[Meituan](https://about.meituan.com/) YOLOv6 is a cutting-edge object detector that offers remarkable balance between speed and accuracy, making it a popular choice for real-time applications. This model introduces several notable enhancements on its architecture and training scheme, including the implementation of a Bi-directional Concatenation (BiC) module, an anchor-aided training (AAT) strategy, and an improved backbone and neck design for state-of-the-art accuracy on the COCO dataset.
 **Overview of YOLOv6.** Model architecture diagram showing the redesigned network components and training strategies that have led to significant performance improvements. (a) The neck of YOLOv6 (N and S are shown). Note for M/L, RepBlocks is replaced with CSPStackRep. (b) The structure of a BiC module. (c) A SimCSPSPPF block. ([source](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.05586.pdf)).
- **Bidirectional Concatenation (BiC) Module:** YOLOv6 introduces a BiC module in the neck of the detector, enhancing localization signals and delivering performance gains with negligible speed degradation.
- **Anchor-Aided Training (AAT) Strategy:** This model proposes AAT to enjoy the benefits of both anchor-based and anchor-free paradigms without compromising inference efficiency.
- **Enhanced Backbone and Neck Design:** By deepening YOLOv6 to include another stage in the backbone and neck, this model achieves state-of-the-art performance on the COCO dataset at high-resolution input.
- **Self-Distillation Strategy:** A new self-distillation strategy is implemented to boost the performance of smaller models of YOLOv6, enhancing the auxiliary regression branch during training and removing it at inference to avoid a marked speed decline.
YOLOv6 also provides quantized models for different [precisions](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/precision) and models optimized for mobile platforms.
This example provides simple YOLOv6 training and inference examples. For full documentation on these and other [modes](../modes/index.md) see the [Predict](../modes/predict.md), [Train](../modes/train.md), [Val](../modes/val.md) and [Export](../modes/export.md) docs pages.
[PyTorch](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/pytorch) pretrained `*.pt` models as well as configuration `*.yaml` files can be passed to the `YOLO()` class to create a model instance in python:
The YOLOv6 series offers a range of models, each optimized for high-performance [Object Detection](../tasks/detect.md). These models cater to varying computational needs and [accuracy](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/accuracy) requirements, making them versatile for a wide array of applications.
This table provides a detailed overview of the YOLOv6 model variants, highlighting their capabilities in [object detection](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/object-detection) tasks and their compatibility with various operational modes such as [Inference](../modes/predict.md), [Validation](../modes/val.md), [Training](../modes/train.md), and [Export](../modes/export.md). This comprehensive support ensures that users can fully leverage the capabilities of YOLOv6 models in a broad range of object detection scenarios.
The original YOLOv6 paper can be found on [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05586). The authors have made their work publicly available, and the codebase can be accessed on [GitHub](https://github.com/meituan/YOLOv6). We appreciate their efforts in advancing the field and making their work accessible to the broader community.
Meituan YOLOv6 is a state-of-the-art object detector that balances speed and accuracy, ideal for real-time applications. It features notable architectural enhancements like the Bi-directional Concatenation (BiC) module and an Anchor-Aided Training (AAT) strategy. These innovations provide substantial performance gains with minimal speed degradation, making YOLOv6 a competitive choice for object detection tasks.
The Bi-directional Concatenation (BiC) module in YOLOv6 enhances localization signals in the detector's neck, delivering performance improvements with negligible speed impact. This module effectively combines different feature maps, increasing the model's ability to detect objects accurately. For more details on YOLOv6's features, refer to the [Key Features](#key-features) section.
These models are evaluated on the COCO dataset using an NVIDIA T4 GPU. For more on performance metrics, see the [Performance Metrics](#performance-metrics) section.
Anchor-Aided Training (AAT) in YOLOv6 combines elements of anchor-based and anchor-free approaches, enhancing the model's detection capabilities without compromising inference efficiency. This strategy leverages anchors during training to improve [bounding box](https://www.ultralytics.com/glossary/bounding-box) predictions, making YOLOv6 effective in diverse object detection tasks.
YOLOv6 supports various operational modes including Inference, Validation, Training, and Export. This flexibility allows users to fully exploit the model's capabilities in different scenarios. Check out the [Supported Tasks and Modes](#supported-tasks-and-modes) section for a detailed overview of each mode.
