We propose to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can automatically process infrared video to detect and classify marine mammals

The awardee, Toyon Research Corporation, was awarded a $150,000 Project Grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the NOAA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program (CFDA 11.021) to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system to automatically process infrared video to detect and classify marine mammals. Using a novel deep neural network architecture developed at Toyon based on the latest artificial neural network research, the awardee will train their AI system on months of recorded long wave infrared video from multiple cameras observing the ocean day and night with occasional marine mammal presence. They will evaluate the AI system's performance compared to existing human-developed algorithms. The six-month project period runs from September 1, 2021 to February 28, 2022.

We will use a novel deep neural architecture developed at toyon based on the latest research in artificial neural networks. Our approach is able to capture both temporal and spatial features that are present in the infrared video. We plan to train our network using months of recorded long wave infrared (lwir) video from multiple cameras that observed the ocean day and night for months at a time with marine mammals present on occasion. Our training process will involve the use of human-developed algorithms and semi-automated tools for data extraction. We will evaluate the performance of our AI system and compare its performance to existing human-developed algorithms.