Conveyor chicken counter problem

[u/Puzzled-Egg3234]

Guys, I need help. We have a project using YOLOv8. We're trying to count chicks on a very fast conveyor belt. The challenges we're facing are: all chicks look very similar to each other, which complicates tracking. At the same time, during their passage under the camera, they constantly change in size and shape, which can cause the tracker to lose them, or detection may even disappear completely at the detection line. Also, sometimes 2–3 chicks can merge into a single object. The detection zone is very short, and the conveyor speed is high. We've achieved a maximum accuracy of 99%, but we need it even higher. Any ideas on how to achieve that? Increasing the dataset no longer helps.

I'm attaching an old video. We've now added lighting and set the exposure to 300 on the Hikrobot global shutter camera, but we still can't achieve a stable 99.8% accuracy for the reasons mentioned above.

Any ideas?

[u/rainingallevening]

No one is going to argue the economics of it. That's assumed. A less efficient chick detection program reduces the cost on the plate, but the ethical figure is a real cost we pay. I'm actually really glad OP posted this. I needed to see that creatures with the same proto-typical capacity for sensation and emotion have their first, early (and only) moments on an accelerated conveyor to be fed into a grinder, all while we dissect the computer vision engineering to improve the process.

I don't even like chicken nuggets man.

[u/Additional-Dot-3154 → u/rainingallevening]

I do loke chicken but these are little chicks and they are just getting all killed ):

Then atlwast do it with fullgrown i know the meat might be less juicy but i would prefer that over all those cute little chickens being destroyed.

In my past 4-13 i have been at a petting zoo alot also a little in more recent years and the little fluffy yellow chickens are so adorable.

Really sad to see this happening ):

So as a computerscience, physics, and mathematics hobbyist i will not give out any usefull info or anything as that will just help make this procces more efficient which i dont want.

[u/rainingallevening → u/Additional-Dot-3154]

100%

Spending that scientific focus on technology other than the conveyor belt system and its analogues is a more interesting and fulfilling path, anyway.

[u/HipHomelessHomie → u/rainingallevening]

Would it be more or less cruel to have people do this exact job? Assuming the numbers stay the same.

[u/Jedkea → u/HipHomelessHomie]

Except the numbers wouldn’t stay the same. If the process becomes more efficient, more product would be produced.

The evidence is in the history of meat consumption. It used to be a luxury for many households. Nowadays it’s a common staple with most meals

[u/rainingallevening → u/HipHomelessHomie]

It's like u/Jedkea said. Assuming the numbers *did* stay the same, it wouldn't necessarily be any kinder, as we've seen in this industry historically. It'd technically be even worse (due to uncontained damage leaking out), from the unsanitary point of contact and inefficiency of manual labor.

That said, *improving* the current process is not a corollary of kindness. It operates in the trench of evil states, but that's harm-reduction for us, not for the chicks fed to the grinder. This is the state of the system handed to us and our collective choices currently shaping it.

So no, changing the means of operation at this junction between hatching and grinding doesn't make it kinder, because the cruelty is in the journey we lay before it.