Hylte Jakt & Lantman, a subsidiary of HYMA Skog & Trädgård, is a company active in the forestry, gardening and outdoor industry and needed to further develop one of its best-selling products. The product in question is a trail camera - a type of surveillance camera used on hunting grounds and in other outdoor spaces for the landowner to be able to capture (on image, that is) and identify what kind of species are moving in the area, whether it is a deer, squirrel or a disoriented human being. The camera is connected to a cloud service meaning all photos are continuously saved to the cloud.
HYMA wished to extend the product offering of the trail camera to include detecting what kind of creatures images taken by trail cameras contain. Or how many animals there are. Or maybe if it even is an animal or just a crooked tree… Anyway, you get the issue: our client needed a high-tech solution that could identify the specific animal in the images captured by the camera.
To be able to identify what kind of animal has been captured by a trail camera, we built an AI-based system which uses machine learning algorithms that retrain based on user feedback. The system is coded in Python and uses TensorFlow and Keras to train a classifier model for inferring the species in images and videos. The solution is deployed in Azure with Kubernetes.
The solution enables our client’s end-users to log onto the cloud and see identified animals in their pictures, as well as give feedback on a classification. This feedback is stored and used for transfer learning, ensuring continuous improvements in the solution’s machine learning algorithm.
Technolgy used:
Cloud: Azure
Back-end development: Python
AI/ML: TensorFlow
For our client, a snazzy high-tech feature has been added to their already great product. And for their users, where previously the camera’s owner had to focus - eyes squinting, almost feeling the headache coming - when trying to distinguish what animal it was that the camera had captured - it is now done automatically.
In terms of numbers:
Our best-selling trail camera already offered some rather high-tech solutions for the users. For example, they can change the settings remotely and as well as access all images on the cloud. With this AI add-on, our users now get an even better experience that makes the detection process a lot easier.
Anders Carlsson, CEO at HYMA Skog & Trädgård
