Iterative human and automated identification of wildlife images

Camera trapping is increasingly being used to monitor wildlife, but this technology typically requires extensive data annotation. Recently, deep learning has substantially advanced automatic wildlife recognition. However, current methods are hampered by a dependence on large static datasets, whereas wildlife data are intrinsically dynamic and involve long-tailed distributions. These drawbacks can be overcome through a hybrid combination of machine learning and humans in the loop. Our proposed iterative human and automated identification approach is capable of learning from wildlife imagery data with a long-tailed distribution. Additionally, it includes self-updating learning, which facilitates capturing the community dynamics of rapidly changing natural systems. Extensive experiments show that our approach can achieve an ~90% accuracy employing only ~20% of the human annotations of existing approaches. Our synergistic collaboration of humans and machines transforms deep learning from a relatively inefficient post-annotation tool to a collaborative ongoing annotation tool that vastly reduces the burden of human annotation and enables efficient and constant model updates. Camera trapping is a widely adopted method for monitoring terrestrial mammals. However, a drawback is the amount of human annotation needed to keep pace with continuous data collection. The authors developed a hybrid system of machine learning and humans in the loop, which minimizes annotation load and improves efficiency.