通过粪便堆积点定位犀牛,用少样本学习大幅降低标注成本。
Find Rhinos without Finding Rhinos: Active Learning with Multimodal Imagery of South African Rhino Habitats

- 用热成像、可见光与激光雷达图像识别犀牛粪堆,替代直接追踪犀牛。
- 仅需94%更少的标注数据,性能媲美无主动学习的模型。
- 发现粪堆聚集分布,可指导巡护员精准布防反盗猎。
地球上许多标志性大型动物因人类活动而濒危,尤其是非洲犀牛正面临盗猎危机。监测犀牛活动对保护至关重要,但因其行踪隐秘难以实现。为此,本文提出新方法:通过绘制集体排泄点(称为‘粪堆’)来推断犀牛的空间行为,为反盗猎、管理与再引入提供支持。本研究首次利用遥感热成像、RGB和LiDAR影像,在被动与主动学习设置下构建分类器以检测粪堆。由于数据集存在极端类别不平衡,现有主动学习方法表现不佳,因此我们设计了MultimodAL系统,采用排序策略与多模态融合,在仅使用94%更少标签的情况下达到与被动学习模型相当的性能。该方法在类似规模数据集上可节省超过76小时标注时间。意外发现粪堆并非随机分布,而是高度聚集。因此,巡护人员应重点部署于高密度粪堆区域,符合联合国可持续发展目标15.7。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Much of Earth's charismatic megafauna is endangered by human activities, particularly the rhino, which is at risk of extinction due to the poaching crisis in Africa. Monitoring rhinos' movement is crucial to their protection but has unfortunately proven difficult because rhinos are elusive. Therefore, instead of tracking rhinos, we propose the novel approach of mapping communal defecation sites, called middens, which give information about rhinos' spatial behavior valuable to anti-poaching, management, and reintroduction efforts. This paper provides the first-ever mapping of rhino midden locations by building classifiers to detect them using remotely sensed thermal, RGB, and LiDAR imagery in passive and active learning settings. As existing active learning methods perform poorly due to the extreme class imbalance in our dataset, we design MultimodAL, an active learning system employing a ranking technique and multimodality to achieve competitive performance with passive learning models with 94% fewer labels. Our methods could therefore save over 76 hours in labeling time when used on a similarly-sized dataset. Unexpectedly, our midden map reveals that rhino middens are not randomly distributed throughout the landscape; rather, they are clustered. Consequently, rangers should be targeted at areas with high midden densities to strengthen anti-poaching efforts, in line with UN Target 15.7.
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