Angus Cattle Recognition Using Deep Learning

摘要

Angus cattle have significant economical values. Individualized management is expected to improve the efficiency and prevent financial loss in the farming industry. However Angus cattle, being all black, are a challenging case for visual recognition. We present a system for image segmentation and identification on Angus cattle using deep learning methods. Two databases of cattle were first collected and annotated, one is frontal face only, captured in a lab setting with controlled lighting and pose in the same day. The second was captured in a farm with natural light and background at three different days. The full body of cattle is captured from different angles. Using three popular neutral networks: PrimNet, VGG16 and ResNet50, we have evaluated a number of design choices for cattle identifications, including face only, face + body, and with/without background segmentation. The best result is obtained using face + body image without background, achieving 85.45% accuracy with the VGG16 net. If we use images captured under different days as training and testing datasets, the accuracy drops dramatically below 10%. It remains as a challenging open problem to be resolved.