University of Twente Student Theses
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Exploring Real-Time Acoustic Analysis for Monitoring Welfare in Shelter Cats
Ceban, Anamaria (2025) Exploring Real-Time Acoustic Analysis for Monitoring Welfare in Shelter Cats.
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Abstract: | Animal shelters often exist in resource-poor environments, where staff can barely monitor or identify early signs of stress or illness in certain animals, cats being the experts at concealing stress or signs of being unwell. This project provides a proof-of-concept, realtime, low-cost monitoring solution to identify potential distress or sickness in cats via their vocalizations before an indication of any clinical signs of illness or distress is truly displayed. Specifically, this will be done via finding of cat vocalizations, using a micro- phone set up and a Raspberry Pi as the computational engine of its use. It identifies vocalizations using a system of 2 YAMNet models: a fine-tuned model and the classic YAMNet model. The system achieved an overall clas- sification accuracy of 76%, supporting the feasibility of vocalization-based monitoring in practice. This study aims to assist shelters with inexpensive, non-intrusive, early detection of well-being issues in cats prior to clinical assessment. This study presents whether such a system can credibly improve cat welfare in animal shelters, whilst being computationally efficient, and scalable. |
Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
Subject: | 54 computer science |
Programme: | Computer Science BSc (56964) |
Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107774 |
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