用视觉模型自动估算黑猩猩数量,准确度接近人工方法。
Deep in the Jungle: Towards Automating Chimpanzee Population Estimation
- 将单目深度估计模型嵌入相机陷阱工作流,替代人工测距。
- 自动估算结果与人工方法相差不超过22%,但存在系统性高估距离的偏差。
- 适合需要大规模监测野生灵长类的保护项目快速部署使用。
大型猿类无标记种群的数量与密度估算依赖于需动物到相机距离的统计框架。实际操作中,获取这些距离需对大量相机陷阱视频进行人工解读,耗时费力。本研究提出将基于计算机视觉的单目深度估计(MDE)流程直接整合至生态监测工作流中,用于大猿保护。基于220段记录野生黑猩猩种群的真实世界视频数据集,我们结合两种MDE模型(Dense Prediction Transformers和Depth Anything)与多种距离采样策略,生成检测距离估计,并据此推断种群密度与数量。对比人工获取的基准数据发现,校准后的DPT在距离估计精度及下游密度与数量推断上均优于Depth Anything。然而,两者在复杂森林环境中均存在系统性偏差:倾向于高估检测距离,导致密度与数量被低估。我们进一步发现,不同距离范围内的动物检测失败是限制估计精度的主要因素。整体而言,本研究证明了基于MDE的相机陷阱距离采样是替代人工测距的一种可行且实用的方案,其种群估算结果与传统方法相差不超过22%。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The estimation of abundance and density in unmarked populations of great apes relies on statistical frameworks that require animal-to-camera distance measurements. In practice, acquiring these distances depends on labour-intensive manual interpretation of animal observations across large camera trap video corpora. This study introduces and evaluates an only sparsely explored alternative: the integration of computer vision-based monocular depth estimation (MDE) pipelines directly into ecological camera trap workflows for great ape conservation. Using a real-world dataset of 220 camera trap videos documenting a wild chimpanzee population, we combine two MDE models, Dense Prediction Transformers and Depth Anything, with multiple distance sampling strategies. These components are used to generate detection distance estimates, from which population density and abundance are inferred. Comparative analysis against manually derived ground-truth distances shows that calibrated DPT consistently outperforms Depth Anything. This advantage is observed in both distance estimation accuracy and downstream density and abundance inference. Nevertheless, both models exhibit systematic biases. We show that, given complex forest environments, they tend to overestimate detection distances and consequently underestimate density and abundance relative to conventional manual approaches. We further find that failures in animal detection across distance ranges are a primary factor limiting estimation accuracy. Overall, this work provides a case study that shows MDE-driven camera trap distance sampling is a viable and practical alternative to manual distance estimation. The proposed approach yields population estimates within 22% of those obtained using traditional methods.
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