Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Abstract In-situ visual observations of marine organisms is crucial to developing behavioural understandings and their relations to their surrounding ecosystem. Typically, these observations are collected via divers, tags, and remotely-operated or human-piloted vehicles. Recently, howev...

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Main Authors: Cai, Levi, McGuire, Nathan E., Hanlon, Roger, Mooney, T. A., Girdhar, Yogesh
Other Authors: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer US 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148296
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author Cai, Levi
McGuire, Nathan E.
Hanlon, Roger
Mooney, T. A.
Girdhar, Yogesh
author2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
author_facet Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Cai, Levi
McGuire, Nathan E.
Hanlon, Roger
Mooney, T. A.
Girdhar, Yogesh
author_sort Cai, Levi
collection MIT
description Abstract In-situ visual observations of marine organisms is crucial to developing behavioural understandings and their relations to their surrounding ecosystem. Typically, these observations are collected via divers, tags, and remotely-operated or human-piloted vehicles. Recently, however, autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with cameras and embedded computers with GPU capabilities are being developed for a variety of applications, and in particular, can be used to supplement these existing data collection mechanisms where human operation or tags are more difficult. Existing approaches have focused on using fully-supervised tracking methods, but labelled data for many underwater species are severely lacking. Semi-supervised trackers may offer alternative tracking solutions because they require less data than fully-supervised counterparts. However, because there are not existing realistic underwater tracking datasets, the performance of semi-supervised tracking algorithms in the marine domain is not well understood. To better evaluate their performance and utility, in this paper we provide (1) a novel dataset specific to marine animals located at http://warp.whoi.edu/vmat/ , (2) an evaluation of state-of-the-art semi-supervised algorithms in the context of underwater animal tracking, and (3) an evaluation of real-world performance through demonstrations using a semi-supervised algorithm on-board an autonomous underwater vehicle to track marine animals in the wild.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1482962024-01-22T18:45:16Z Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Cai, Levi McGuire, Nathan E. Hanlon, Roger Mooney, T. A. Girdhar, Yogesh Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Abstract In-situ visual observations of marine organisms is crucial to developing behavioural understandings and their relations to their surrounding ecosystem. Typically, these observations are collected via divers, tags, and remotely-operated or human-piloted vehicles. Recently, however, autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with cameras and embedded computers with GPU capabilities are being developed for a variety of applications, and in particular, can be used to supplement these existing data collection mechanisms where human operation or tags are more difficult. Existing approaches have focused on using fully-supervised tracking methods, but labelled data for many underwater species are severely lacking. Semi-supervised trackers may offer alternative tracking solutions because they require less data than fully-supervised counterparts. However, because there are not existing realistic underwater tracking datasets, the performance of semi-supervised tracking algorithms in the marine domain is not well understood. To better evaluate their performance and utility, in this paper we provide (1) a novel dataset specific to marine animals located at http://warp.whoi.edu/vmat/ , (2) an evaluation of state-of-the-art semi-supervised algorithms in the context of underwater animal tracking, and (3) an evaluation of real-world performance through demonstrations using a semi-supervised algorithm on-board an autonomous underwater vehicle to track marine animals in the wild. 2023-03-06T15:42:14Z 2023-03-06T15:42:14Z 2023-03-01 2023-03-05T04:08:24Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148296 Cai, Levi, McGuire, Nathan E., Hanlon, Roger, Mooney, T. A. and Girdhar, Yogesh. 2023. "Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles." PUBLISHER_CC en https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-023-01762-5 Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Author(s) application/pdf Springer US Springer US
spellingShingle Cai, Levi
McGuire, Nathan E.
Hanlon, Roger
Mooney, T. A.
Girdhar, Yogesh
Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title_full Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title_fullStr Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title_full_unstemmed Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title_short Semi-supervised Visual Tracking of Marine Animals Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
title_sort semi supervised visual tracking of marine animals using autonomous underwater vehicles
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148296
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AT mooneyta semisupervisedvisualtrackingofmarineanimalsusingautonomousunderwatervehicles
AT girdharyogesh semisupervisedvisualtrackingofmarineanimalsusingautonomousunderwatervehicles