On-Bird Sound Recordings: Automatic Acoustic Recognition of Activities and Contexts

Publication Type:Journal Article
Year of Publication:2017
Authors:Stowell, Gill
Journal:IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing
Volume:25
Issue:6
Pagination:1193 - 1206
Date Published:Jan-06-2017
ISSN:2329-9290
Keywords:acoustics, birds, context, event detection, image analysis, microphones, pattern recognition, speech, zoology
Abstract:

We introduce a novel approach to studying animal behavior and the context in which it occurs, through the use of microphone backpacks carried on the backs of individual free-flying birds. These sensors are increasingly used by animal behavior researchers to study individual vocalizations of freely behaving animals, even in the field. However, such devices may record more than an animal's vocal behavior, and have the potential to be used for investigating specific activities (movement) and context (background) within which vocalizations occur. To facilitate this approach, we investigate the automatic annotation of such recordings through two different sound scene analysis paradigms: A scene-classification method using feature learning, and an event-detection method using probabilistic latent component analysis. We analyze recordings made with Eurasian jackdaws (Corvus monedula) in both captive and field settings. Results are comparable with the state of the art in sound scene analysis; we find that the current recognition quality level enables scalable automatic annotation of audio logger data, given partial annotation, but also find that individual differences between animals and/or their backpacks limit the generalization from one individual to another. we consider the interrelation of “scenes” and “events” in this particular task, and issues of temporal resolution.

URL:http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7933044/
DOI:10.1109/TASLP.2017.2690565
Short Title:IEEE/ACM Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process.
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Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith