Refined Cattle Detection Using Composite Background Subtraction and Brightness Intensity from Bird's Eye Images

Abstract

Breeding cattle are known to be social animals that make groups as humans. Focusing on the sociality of the cattle, this paper aims to grasp and predict the conditions of breeding cattle by detecting the interactions between them. In order to detect such interactions, it is necessary to follow the behaviors of the breeding cattle to examine how they approach each other. In this study, the positions and movements of the breeding cattle are detected from bird's eye images. In the preceding study, breeding cattle were experimentally detected by the background subtraction method using multiple background images because of the poor distinctive features of breeding cattle. However, the method employed in that study used images that may not completely remove breeding cattle in a background image in order to cope with the changing brightness, which may cause errors in detection. Moreover, a huge amount of time may be consumed in selecting the optimal background image for the input image. Therefore, we propose a method in this paper by applying composite background images and reduction of search images using brightness to the method of the preceding study. The composite background image is an image obtained by overriding other images to the breeding cattle region, resultantly removing the cattle region. When creating the composite background, we consider that the image that does not contain cattle region can be used as a background image which may successfully improve the detection accuracy. When selecting an optimal background image, we also consider as that the processing time will be shortened by reducing the search images by brightness. In the experiment, the precision and the processing time are compared based on the cases with or without composite background image and by reduction of the search images by brightness. As a result, it was confirmed that the detection accuracy was improved by the proposed method and the processing time could be shortened.