A Lightweight Approach for Analyzing Insect Behavior on a Mobile System

Abstract

This paper describes the research, design, and development of a ligthweight system created in order to track multiple insects on just-recorded videos, and generate statistics using the obtained information. The system was created in order to replace the previous methods (manual monitoring that requires a lot of human assistance, or expensive specific instrumental) used in a laboratory to analyze insect behavior, and uses algorithms that are fast enough to allow it to run on a simple mobile phone. The final installation is simple and unexpensive, and allows the researchers to immediately obtain the data needed to evaluate their work. Typical segmentation and tracking problems (bad-quality frames, changes on the appearence of the tracked objects or the background scene, occlusion between an object and the scene or between multiple objects, or camera movement) were attacked. The tortuosity of the insect’s path was calculated using our own algorithm to approximate the fractal dimension of the trails, and the result is a flexible system that allows researchers to record and immediately analyze the behavior of multiple insects in a laboratory.