Abstract
The goal of this research is to recognize the nest digging activity of tortoises using a device mounted atop the tortoise carapace. The device classifies tortoise movements in order to discriminate between nest digging, and non-digging activity (specifically walking and eating). Accelerometer data was collected from devices attached to the carapace of a number of tortoises during their two-month nesting period. Our system uses an accelerometer and an activity recognition system (ARS) which is modularly structured using an artificial neural network and an output filter. For the purpose of experiment and comparison, and with the aim of minimizing the computational cost, the artificial neural network has been modelled according to three different architectures based on the input delay neural network (IDNN). We show that the ARS can achieve very high accuracy on segments of data sequences, with an extremely small neural network that can be embedded in programmable low power devices. Given that digging is typically a long activity (up to two hours), the application of ARS on data segments can be repeated over time to set up a reliable and efficient system, called Tortoise@, for digging activity recognition.
Highlights
The impact of the species extinction is of greater devastation than was ever expected [1]
We performed the evaluation of the proposed models, Input Delay Neural Network (IDNN), IDNN local receptive fields (LRF), and IDNN LRF weight sharing (WS), for TartaNet with the aim to find a good trade-off between their performance and applicability
This work was inspired by a concrete applicative problem concerning the protection of tortoises, and, in particular, by the need of biologging devices that may localize tortoises during the escavation of their nest to enable protection programs aiming at retrieving the eggs before the hatching and at protecting the hatchlings in their first year of life
Summary
The impact of the species extinction is of greater devastation than was ever expected [1]. Reptiles and amphibians seem to have been disproportionately affected, showing average population decreases of 34% and 97% respectively. The biggest threat to biodiversity historically comes from a combined impact of habitat loss, degradation, new predators, food, and the mistreatment of animals for material assets. This level and type of endangerment was reported in [2] and [3]. The decrease in tortoise population is attributable to a combination of infertility and predation of eggs (at incubation, as well as young tortoises in their first years of life).
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