A Regional Farming Pig Counting System Based on Improved Instance Segmentation Algorithm

doi:10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310001

Abstract

Abstract:

[Objective] The pig farming industry is increasingly moving towards intensification. Precise feeding and management based on the number of pigs in the barn are crucial for large-scale breeding operations. Currently, pig farming facilities mainly rely on manual counting for tracking slaughtered and stored pigs. This is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, but also prone to counting errors due to pig movement and potential cheating. As breeding operations expand, the periodic live asset inventories put significant strain on human, material and financial resources. Although methods based on electronic ear tags can assist in pig counting, these ear tags are easy to break and fall off in group housing environments. Most of the existing methods for counting pigs based on computer vision require capturing images from a top-down perspective, necessitating the installation of cameras above each hogpen or even the use of drones, resulting in high installation and maintenance costs. To address the challenges faced in the group pig counting task, a high-efficiency and low-cost pig counting method was proposed based on improved instance segmentation algorithm and WeChat public platform. [Methods] Firstly, a smartphone was used to collect pig image data in the area from a human view perspective, and each pig's outline in the image was annotated to establish a pig count dataset. The training set contains 606 images and the test set contains 65 images. Secondly, an efficient global attention module was proposed by improving Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM). The efficient global attention module first performed a dimension permutation operation on the input feature map to obtain the interaction between its channels and spatial dimensions. The permuted features were aggregated using Global Average Pooling (GAP). One-dimensional convolution replaced the fully connected operation in CBAM, eliminating dimensionality reduction and significantly reducing the model's parameters number. This module was integrated into the YOLOv8 single-stage instance segmentation network to build the pig counting model YOLOv8x-Ours. By adding an efficient global attention module into each C2f layer of the YOLOv8 backbone network, the dimensional dependencies and feature information in the image could be extracted more effectively, thereby achieving high-accuracy pig counting. Lastly, with a focus on user experience and outreach, a pig counting WeChat mini program was developed based on the WeChat public platform and Django Web framework. The counting model was deployed to count pigs using images captured by smartphones. The pig counting WeChat mini program mainly includes the following functions: 1) Login. 2) Establishing the hierarchical structure of pig farm. 3) Image acquisition. 4) Pig Counting. 5) User interaction. 6) Historical records. [Results and Discussions] This study experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of deep learning technology in the task of pig counting. Compared with existing methods of Mask R-CNN, YOLACT(Real-time Instance Segmentation), PolarMask, SOLO and Yolov5x, the proposed pig counting model YOLOv8x-Ours exhibited superior performance in terms of accuracy and stability. Notably, YOLOv8x-Ours achieved the highest accuracy in counting, with errors of less than 2 and 3 pigs on the test set. Specifically, 93.8% of the total test images had counting errors of less than 3 pigs. Compared with the two-stage instance segmentation algorithm Mask R-CNN and the YOLOv8x model that applies the CBAM attention mechanism, YOLOv8x-Ours showed performance improvements of 7.6% and 3%, respectively. And due to the single-stage design and anchor-free architecture of the YOLOv8 model, the processing speed of a single image was only 64 ms, 1/8 of Mask R-CNN. By embedding the model into the WeChat mini program platform, pig counting was conducted using smartphone images. In cases where the model incorrectly detected pigs, users were given the option to click on the erroneous location in the result image to adjust the statistical outcomes, thereby enhancing the accuracy of pig counting. [Conclusions] The proposed pig counting method eliminates the need for installing hardware equipment in the breeding area of the pig farm, enabling pig counting to be carried out effortlessly using just a smartphone. Users can promptly spot any errors in the counting results through image segmentation visualization and easily rectify any inaccuracies. This collaborative human-machine model not only reduces the need for extensive manpower but also guarantees the precision and user-friendliness of the counting outcomes.

Key words: pig counting, deep learning, WeChat mini program, YOLOv8, instance segmentation

ZHANG Yanqi, ZHOU Shuo, ZHANG Ning, CHAI Xiujuan, SUN Tan. A Regional Farming Pig Counting System Based on Improved Instance Segmentation Algorithm[J]. Smart Agriculture, doi: 10.12133/j.smartag.SA202310001.

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References 21

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数据集	图像数量	猪只总数/头	单幅图像最小猪只数/头	单幅图像最大猪只数/头
训练集	606	11 609	4	63
测试集	65	2 046	10	46

网络模型	AP50	AP（50：95）	参数量/MB	单幅图像平均检测时间/ms
YOLACT	0.689	0.399	29.2	63
PolarMask	0.742	0.422	36.3	151
SOLO	0.811	0.537	46.2	113
Mask R-CNN	0.900	0.644	43.7	500
YOLOv5x	0.865	0.502	73.9	26
YOLOv8x	0.897	0.636	68.2	44
YOLOv8x-CBAM	0.901	0.646	125.3	109
YOLOv8x-Ours	0.901	0.660	71.7	64

模型	评价指标	得分阈值
模型	评价指标	0.05	0.1	0.15	0.2	0.25	0.3	0.35	0.4
YOLACT	MAE					7.125	7.125	7.125	7.125
	RMSE		—			8.369	8.369	8.369	8.369
	R ²					0.327	0.327	0.327	0.327
PolarMask	MAE					5.512	5.578	2.853	4.157
	RMSE		—			7.132	6.596	3.775	5.018
	R ²					0.519	0.585	0.868	0.763
SOLO	MAE					3.637	2.913	3.141	4.085
	RMSE		—			4.792	3.634	4.066	4.978
	R ²					0.785	0.879	0.843	0.767
Mask R-CNN	MAE					1.969	1.769	1.754	1.769
	RMSE		—			2.649	2.421	2.366	2.376
	R ²					0.932	0.943	0.946	0.945
YOLOv8x	MAE	2.169	1.985	2.462	2.892	3.077
	RMSE	2.826	2.715	3.153	3.526	3.713		—
	R ²	0.922	0.928	0.903	0.879	0.866
YOLOv8x -CBAM	MAE	1.985	1.831	1.923	1.835	2.431
	RMSE	2.720	2.434	2.508	2.440	3.103		—
	R ²	0.928	0.942	0.939	0.939	0.906
YOLOv8x -Ours	MAE	1.969	1.798	1.727	1.799	2.316
	RMSE	2.651	2.375	2.168	2.380	3.005		—
	R ²	0.931	0.945	0.949	0.944	0.938

模型	准确计数的图像		误差小于2头猪的图像		误差小于3头猪的图像		误差大于2头猪的图像
模型	数量	占比/%	数量	占比/%	数量	占比/%	数量	占比/%
YOLCAT	22	33.8	40	61.5	52	80.0	13	20.0
YOLOv5x	29	44.6	48	73.8	56	86.2	9	13.8
PolarMask	33	50.8	47	72.3	56	86.2	9	13.8
SOLO	35	53.8	50	76.9	58	89.2	7	10.8
YOLOv8x	35	53.8	49	75.4	57	87.7	8	12.3
Mask R-CNN	37	56.9	49	75.4	56	86.2	9	13.8
YOLOv8x-CBAM	41	63.1	51	78.5	59	90.8	6	9.2
YOLOv8x-Ours	43	66.2	57	87.7	61	93.8	4	6.2

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