Trap Camera Data
Overview
Automated Image Research (A.I.R.) is a cutting-edge image analysis application which automatically filters, analyzes, and sorts trap camera image data for wildlife researchers. A researcher simply selects the SD Card from the trap camera and selects a working directory, then the application utilizes object detection to import images containing animals and record key metrics like location, temperature, and count; and for each animal detected, category, size, and distance. As each image is processed the researcher can observe the detections alongside a satellite image of the location and each additional metric. Simultaneously each processed image can be seen populating the gallery list below a list of filters for intuitive database queries. The user interface's core design principles are simplicity and independence – a personal desktop assistant to pick through large image databases at the click of a button and present relevant findings in a concise, responsive presentation.
Community Benefit
Ecological researchers in remote areas rely heavily on affordable off-the-shelf trap cameras, which while robust and resilient, are prone to false positives due to weather and vegetation. Sorting through these images manually obscures data and bottlenecks research by convoluting the process of preprocessing. Precious hours are spent filtering out false positives, collecting images of species of interest by count, time, and location, determining weather conditions, and speculating distance and size. Lack of reliable internet further alienates them from reliable solutions. A.I.R. aims to give researchers the autonomy to focus their expertise on groundbreaking discoveries.