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© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Detecting animals to estimate abundance can be difficult, particularly when the habitat is dense or the target animals are fossorial. The recent surge in the use of thermal imagers in ecology and their use in animal detections can increase the accuracy of population estimates and improve the subsequent implementation of management programs. However, the use of thermal imagers results in many hours of captured flight videos which require manual review for confirmation of species detection and identification. Therefore, the perceived cost and efficiency trade-off often restricts the use of these systems. Additionally, for many off-the-shelf systems, the exported imagery can be quite low resolution (<9 Hz), increasing the difficulty of using automated detections algorithms to streamline the review process. This paper presents an animal species detection system that utilises the cost-effectiveness of these lower resolution thermal imagers while harnessing the power of transfer learning and an enhanced small object detection algorithm. We have proposed a distant object detection algorithm named Distant-YOLO (D-YOLO) that utilises YOLO (You Only Look Once) and improves its training and structure for the automated detection of target objects in thermal imagery. We trained our system on thermal imaging data of rabbits, their active warrens, feral pigs, and kangaroos collected by thermal imaging researchers in New South Wales and Western Australia. This work will enhance the visual analysis of animal species while performing well on low, medium and high-resolution thermal imagery.

Details

Title
Automated Detection of Animals in Low-Resolution Airborne Thermal Imagery
Author
Ulhaq, Anwaar 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Adams, Peter 2 ; Cox, Tarnya E 3 ; Khan, Asim 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Low, Tom 5 ; Manoranjan, Paul 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 School of Computing, Mathematics and Engineering, Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW 2444, Australia; [email protected] (A.U.); [email protected] (M.P.) 
 Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, South Perth, WA 6151, Australia; [email protected] 
 Department of Primary Industries, Orange, NSW 2800, Australia; [email protected] 
 School of Computing, Mathematics and Engineering, Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW 2444, Australia; [email protected] (A.U.); [email protected] (M.P.); The Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia 
 Tomcat Technologies, Orange, NSW 2800, Australia; [email protected] 
First page
3276
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20724292
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2565700144
Copyright
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.