Automated cattle counting using Mask R-CNN in quadcopter vision system

Title
Automated cattle counting using Mask R-CNN in quadcopter vision system
Publication Date
2020
Author(s)
Xu, Beibei
Wang, Wensheng
Guo, Leifeng
Falzon, Gregory
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1989-9357
Email: gfalzon2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:gfalzon2
Kwan, Paul
Chen, Guipeng
Tait, Amy
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5126-088X
Email: ltait2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:ltait2
Schneider, Derek
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1897-4175
Email: dschnei5@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:dschnei5
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Place of publication
The Netherlands
DOI
10.1016/j.compag.2020.105300
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/58399
Abstract

The accurate and reliable counting of animals in quadcopter acquired imagery is one of the most promising but challenging tasks in intelligent livestock management in the future. In this paper we demonstrate the application of the cutting-edge instance segmentation framework, Mask R-CNN, in the context of cattle counting in different situations such as extensive production pastures and also in intensive housing such as feedlots. The optimal IoU threshold (0.5) and the full-appearance detection for the algorithm in this study are verified through performance evaluation. Experimental results in this research show the framework's potential to perform reliably in offline quadcopter vision systems with an accuracy of 94% in counting cattle on pastures and 92% in feedlots. Compared with the existing typical competing algorithms, Mask R-CNN outperforms both in the counting accuracy and average precision especially on the datasets with occlusion and overlapping. Our research shows promising steps towards the incorporation of artificial intelligence using quadcopters for enhanced management of animals.

Link
Citation
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, v.171, p. 1-12
ISSN
1872-7107
0168-1699
Start page
1
End page
12
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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