Recently, media outlets including the Xinhua News Agency and CGTN have run headlines about the application of facial recognition to identifying golden snub-nosed monkeys in the Qinling Mountain range. The technology has been developed by Northwest University Animal & AI research team led by Prof. Guo Songtao, a senior expert in the study of golden snub-nosed monkeys. They have worked in collaboration with scientists from the computer science community.
For years, scientists at NWU have dedicated themselves to conducting research into the unique features of specimens of this species. Arising out of this, for the first time individual recognition system leveraging Tri-AI technology has been developed to track individual monkeys. So far, this technology for monkey facial recognition has shown great potential for already approximately 200 golden snub-nosed monkeys in the Qingling mountain range have been included.
The experts from the NWU Animal & AI Team say that the Tri-AI-based system can be applied to the detection of multiple groups of different species, thereby making continuous night-time observation possible. Tri-AI technology has greatly improved the efficiency of individual data analysis, provided a new technological approach within zoology and bolstered the protection and smart management of wildlife.
An article entitled ‘Automatic Identification of Individual Primates with Deep Learning Techniques’ was recently published in iScience, a new open-access journal from Cell Press. This covers the details of their work. Prof. Guo Songtao is the correspondence and first author of the published paper, with Associate Prof. Xu Pengfei from NWU and Prof. Miao Guangqi from Xidian University as the co-first author. Three national patents have been granted for this technology.