MVAB Workshop

The workshop programme can be downloaded from here.

Machine Vision of Animals and their Behaviour

Location: Faraday K

Workshop website: http://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/publicweb//mvab2015/

Call for papers: http://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/publicweb//mvab2015/call_for_papers.txt

Paper submission details: http://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/publicweb//mvab2015/#instructions

Workshop chairs:

  • Telmo Amaral, Newcastle University, UK
  • Stephen Matthews, Newcastle University, UK
  • Thomas Plötz, Newcastle University, UK
  • Stephen McKenna, University of Dundee, UK
  • Robert Fisher, University of Edinburgh, UK

This workshop aims to bring together the computer vision for animals community to present and discuss positions, methods and applications addressing key challenges in this emerging field. Discussions at the workshop will seek to understand challenges and identify opportunities and research directions for academia, industry and government from diverse perspectives, such as animal farming, wildlife study and machine vision with pattern recognition. 

The workshop will consist of two keynote talks from agriculture and machine vision, oral presentations and posters. Generous time for Q+A and discussions will be given. The motivation is to stimulate in­-depth discussions on this relatively new, emerging trend of computer vision research.

Authors are invited to submit 4-6 page, high­-quality papers on positions, methods, applications, and work in progress addressing (but not limited to) the challenges stated below for machine vision of animals and their behaviour. Electronic proceedings will be distributed by the BMVC with DOI indexing.

Challenges of Machine Vision:

  • Inferring animal behaviour:
      • Recognition and discrimination of behaviour from reactivity to the environment (e.g., wind, waves).
      • Identification of generic ‘problems’ and classification of specific health and welfare problems.
      • Detection of behaviour changes such as change in activity level (including death), social interactions and change in activity type.
      • Analysis of natural groupings/phenomena, such as herds and swarms appearing all at once.
  • Measuring animals:
      • Identification, tracking and monitoring of individuals in groups.
      • Estimation of count, weight, size, shape, gait and dispersion.
      • Assessment of variation in groups of animals.
      • Classification of different organisms (e.g., by species).
      • Inspection of carcass parts.
      • Inferring body composition from live animals.
  • Technical/Application:
    • Challenging conditions for machine vision, such as frequent changes in lighting
      and background.
    • Challenging environments such as buildings, extensive areas, water systems, deserts, and forests.
    • Big data generated from multiple sources.
    • Precision livestock farming that addresses sustainability.

The workshop will consist of two keynote speakers from agriculture and machine vision, oral presentations of selected papers and posters. Generous time for Q+A and discussions will follow each keynote and oral presentation. The motivation is to stimulate in­depth discussions on this relatively new, emerging trend of computer vision research.

Keynote Speaker: P​rof. Ilias Kyriazakis,​ Newcastle University, UK, Professor of Animal Health

Keynote Speaker: P​rof. Robert Fisher,​ University of Edinburgh, UK, Professor of Computer Vision

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