Automated Pest Counting in Water Traps through Active Robotic Stirring for Occlusion Handling

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gao, Xumin, Stevens, Mark, Cielniak, Grzegorz
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915841132462080
author Gao, Xumin
Stevens, Mark
Cielniak, Grzegorz
author_facet Gao, Xumin
Stevens, Mark
Cielniak, Grzegorz
contents Existing image-based pest counting methods rely on single static images and often produce inaccurate results under occlusion. To address this issue, this paper proposes an automated pest counting method in water traps through active robotic stirring. First, an automated robotic arm-based stirring system is developed to redistribute pests and reveal occluded individuals for counting. Then, the effects of different stirring patterns on pest counting performance are investigated. Six stirring patterns are designed and evaluated across different pest density scenarios to identify the optimal one. Finally, a heuristic counting confidence-driven closed-loop control system is proposed for adaptive-speed robotic stirring, adjusting the stirring speed based on the average change rate of counting confidence between consecutive frames. Experimental results show that the four circles is the optimal stirring pattern, achieving the lowest overall mean absolute counting error of 4.384 and the highest overall mean counting confidence of 0.721. Compared with constant-speed stirring, adaptive-speed stirring reduces task execution time by up to 44.7% and achieves more stable performance across different pest density scenarios. Moreover, the proposed pest counting method reduces the mean absolute counting error by up to 3.428 compared to the single static image counting method under high-density scenarios where occlusion is severe.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_21732
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Automated Pest Counting in Water Traps through Active Robotic Stirring for Occlusion Handling
Gao, Xumin
Stevens, Mark
Cielniak, Grzegorz
Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Existing image-based pest counting methods rely on single static images and often produce inaccurate results under occlusion. To address this issue, this paper proposes an automated pest counting method in water traps through active robotic stirring. First, an automated robotic arm-based stirring system is developed to redistribute pests and reveal occluded individuals for counting. Then, the effects of different stirring patterns on pest counting performance are investigated. Six stirring patterns are designed and evaluated across different pest density scenarios to identify the optimal one. Finally, a heuristic counting confidence-driven closed-loop control system is proposed for adaptive-speed robotic stirring, adjusting the stirring speed based on the average change rate of counting confidence between consecutive frames. Experimental results show that the four circles is the optimal stirring pattern, achieving the lowest overall mean absolute counting error of 4.384 and the highest overall mean counting confidence of 0.721. Compared with constant-speed stirring, adaptive-speed stirring reduces task execution time by up to 44.7% and achieves more stable performance across different pest density scenarios. Moreover, the proposed pest counting method reduces the mean absolute counting error by up to 3.428 compared to the single static image counting method under high-density scenarios where occlusion is severe.
title Automated Pest Counting in Water Traps through Active Robotic Stirring for Occlusion Handling
topic Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21732