Researchers use cell phones and AI to count loose dogs in San Antonio

Just how many loose dogs does San Antonio have? The Southwest Research Institute is preparing to use cell phones and AI technology to find out.   SwRI's Intelligent Systems Division plans to use window-mounted cell phones to survey a selection of areas around the city, recording five-second video clips through an app that will determine whether the clips have captured a dog in it or not.   “We’ve kind of tuned it to be a little permissive. If it thinks it’s a dog: store that video and bring it back,” explained Mike Koets, a staff engineer leading the project. “But then, yeah, we do have additional tools that run on a Windows desktop to further analyze the videos, give us a better automated sense of it, and also allow human review of those to make sure they’re accurate.”   The “computer vision” technology being used to determine if the phone has recorded a dog, cat, cyclist, or a car falls under the umbrella of artificial intelligence.   However, Koets says they are “using some of the simpler, earlier AI technologies around computer vision. It is a neural network. But it’s not the kind of power-hungry, large data center AI that is so much in the news right now.”