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2023 Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) - Deep-Hash Vision: Drone based Deep Hashing for Livestock Monitoring
The College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) is a unique opportunity for college of engineering undergraduate students to engage in hands-on research with a faculty mentor while using critical thinking, collaborative, and entrepreneurial skills. SURP is an 8-week long program (can be non-contiguous), and students are expected to spend at least 20 hours/week working on their research projects and additional time preparing and presenting their poster for the annual SURP symposium; SURP students and their faculty mentor will agree upon a start date and timeline for their research project (with a suggested start date of June 26th, 2023). The goals of SURP are to:
- Help Cal Poly Engineering students develop professionally and enhance their portfolios for future employment.
- Give opportunities for CENG faculty (including lecturers) to advance their research/project agendas over the summer quarter.
- Build lasting student-faculty mentoring relationships
- Provide opportunities for industrial and other external sponsors to work with Cal Poly faculty and students to advance connections, gain access to Cal Poly talent and capabilities, and engage in valuable collaborative activities.
Our Summer 2023 SURP will support over 30 projects (with some projects taking 2 students) for 39 students. You can apply to up to 3 projects on MustangJobs (each project has its own job posting). You need not be in the same department as the faculty advisor to apply to a given project.
Each SURP student participant will receive a CENG Summer Research Grant of $3,500.
Please note that the grant amount is fixed, and additional funding is not available. This grant will be disbursed through the Financial Aid Office toward the end of the summer. Preference will be given to students who have not yet participated in SURP.
This Project
Project Title: Deep-Hash Vision: Drone based Deep Hashing for Livestock Monitoring
Faculty Advisor: Sumona Mukhopadhyay
Faculty Email: mukhopad@calpoly.edu
Faculty Department: CSSE
Number of Students for this project: 1
Description of Research Project: This project focusses on developing a Machine Learning (ML) / Deep Learning (DL) system for monitoring of livestock using aerial images. Building on the work done initially as a SURP 2022 project, the focus for this project this year will be to improve and accelerate the detection of several different livestock in the images using ML/DL . During SURP 2022, a benchmark model was developed for livestock detection of a single animal type using aerial images. The detection was found to be slow and worked for a single livestock detection. This year we focus on improving the model by using semantic hashing technique which are unique codes for an image that could accelerate the detection. In order to speed up the monitoring task using semantically similar livestock images, which is a crucial requirement for real-time detection, we propose to represent the images as a binary code or the hash code. Hashing has been a widely-adopted technique for nearest neighbor search which is a machine learning approach for image recognition in large-scale image retrieval tasks. This increases the recognition rate and allows for herd or group recognition of livestock. The livestock are detected based on using the hash codes with the popular nearest neighbor detector. Moreover, semantic based hashing will allow to retrieve images determine the highest possible accuracy that could be achieved in the detection of animals, of livestock which are visually similar to other breeds. Moreover, we want the model to be scalable such that it detects multiple different categories of livestock in the images. Thus an end-to-end ML pipeline for realtime detection of different types of livestock are the ultimate goal of this project.
HOW TO APPLY:
PLEASE SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING TWO DOCUMENTS VIA HANDSHAKE AND SEE RUBRIC BELOW FOR EVALUATION CRITERIA. YOU CAN APPLY TO UP TO THREE SURP PROJECTS, BUT CAN ONLY BE AWARDED ONE.
- Submit your resume
- Submit a cover letter that answers the following three questions:
- Describe why you are interested in this research project.
- Describe how participating in SURP and working on this research project, will help you advance your academic and professional development goals
- Describe how your past experiences have helped prepare you for your participation in SURP. This includes relevant academic, other formal, and informal preparation.
INCOMPLETE APPLICATIONS COULD DISQUALIFY YOU FROM FURTHER CONSIDERATION.
Note that applications are due April 30; selected students will be notified by no later than May 12.