Implementation of Ant Clustering Algorithm for
IR Imagery in Wind Turbine Applications
Golrokh Mirzaei1, Mohammad Wadood Majid1,
Jeremy Ross2
Department of Electrical and Comp Sci.
University of Toledo1, Toledo, USA
mohsin.jamali@utoledo.edu
Abstract—Interaction of avian with turbines has become an
important public policy issue, so identification and
quantification of avian at turbine sites is crucial.
In this work, first the data is collected in terms of videos
recorded by an IR camera in the vicinity of wind turbine; the
videos are applied for detection and tracking algorithm.
Features are then extracted for each detected target. Ant based
clustering algorithm (ACA) based on Lumer & Faieta with its
three different variations including Standard ACA, Different
Speed ACA and Short Memory ACA is implemented over
extracted features and are compared in terms of different
groups created for detected avian data.
The novelty of this work is quantification of avian
(bird/bat/insect) using IR images in terms of clusters. Also this
work uses Ant Clustering Algorithm which is an effective novel
method for this application. The results of this experiment can
be combined with other type of monitoring systems for better
understanding of avian behavior. It will also be helpful for
biologists for development of appropriate mitigation
techniques.
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to numerous reports of bird/bat interaction with
turbine blades and their mortality [1][2], it is important to
record the behavior of avian near off/on shore wind sites.
Monitoring the bird/bat activity at wind-energy facilities can
be through different techniques such as acoustic methods
[3][4] and visual techniques (e.g. radar and IR camera) [5][6].
These monitoring and quantification of bird/bat activity in the
vicinity of wind turbines can be very useful for development
of mitigation techniques and reduction of avian mortalities.
Acoustics may be useful for species level identification
based on a database of pre-known calls of desired species.
However the quantification of birds and bats using acoustic
methods may not be very reliable as some birds may not call
and some bats may be hovering/calling number of times in a
certain area. IR camera can be a valuable tool for
supplementing the quantification process. Videos can be
recorded over the specific period of time and they can be
processed using video processing techniques to determine the
number of tracks. However separation of the counts in terms
of bats, birds or insects can be very challenging. As pre-
define images of all avian tracks are not available for training
for use in classification. The best method can be to group
bird/bats via available clustering algorithms.
Clustering algorithm can arrange the set of data into
This work is partially supported from DOE Contract #DE-FG36-06G086096
978-1-4673-2527-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
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Mohsin M. Jamali1, Peter V. Gorsevski2, Joseph Frizado2
Verner P. Bingman2
Geospatial Science School of Earth & Environment
Bowling Green State University2
Bowling Green, USA
different groups, based on target features. This is an
unsupervised learning method which is used for exploration
of inter-relationships among a pool of data. In clustering
there is no need to have any priori labeling of the data. This is
in contrast to classification problem which is considered as
supervised method requiring pre-defined databases.
The novelty of this work is quantification of avian
(bird/bat/insect) using IR images in terms of groups created,
which can then be correlated to the results obtained from
other monitoring tools (e.g., acoustics, radar). In this work,
first videos recorded by IR camera are processed by target
detection algorithm which is based on Background
Subtraction and Morphological techniques. Then detected
targets are given to a tracking algorithm which is based on
component connectivity. Target features are extracted and
applied to the Ant Clustering Algorithm (ACA)[7]. This
algorithm is a bio-inspired technique inspired from the
behavior of ants. ACA by Lumer & Faieta (LF) [8] has been
effectively used in different applications for grouping of the
data. This model can also be applied for imagery avian
clustering. An important feature of this algorithm is that no
priori assumption on the number and size of clusters is
needed, in contrast to other clustering problems such as k-
means. Three different versions of LF-ACA are
implemented for clustering including Standard ACA (S-
ACA), Different Speed ACA (DS-ACA) and Short-term
Memory ACA (SM-ACA). Block diagram of Fig. 1 shows
various steps involve in detection, tracking and clustering
process.
Background Feature
Subtraction Extraction
Image Sequence Thresholding
Noise Suppression
Clustering
Tracking
SACA DSACA SMACA
Figure 1. Block Diagram of the Avian Detection and Tracking system
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 The rest of this paper is structured as follows: First data Tracking Algorithm
acquisition is explained in Section II. Then target (1) Convert videos to frames
detection/tracking and feature extraction is described in (2) Detect blobs
Section III. Clustering including three different variations of (3) Create morphological blobs
(4) Label the blobs
LF model is presented in Section IV. Finally results and (5) Check Component Connectivity
conclusions are given. a) In case of connectivity , use same labeling
b) Else use new labeling
II. DATA ACQUISITION (6) Check for the last frame containing blob with same label
a) In case of last frame goto step 7
The camera used in this study is a thermal IR camera b) Else check new frame
(FLIR SR-19) with resolution of 704 × 480 pixels. The (7) Plot target trajectory
camera is static and it is oriented +19.75° from North, while Figure 2. Detection and Tracking process
the left side of the screen is the East and the right side is the ∑
West. The rate of the recording is 30 frames/sec (fps). 4
1 0.033
Video feeds from IR camera are stored onto a hard drive for
further data processing. The data was collected between Where is the velocity of kth bird, is the distance which
May - July 2011, starting at one hour after the sunset to one is passed by bird in frame i . The value of 0.033 is the time
hour before sunrise; as we are concerned with nocturnal of each frame including the bird, considering the camera
bird/bat migration. Because of hardware limitations, frame rate of 30 frames/second.
recorded videos are divided into small videos of fifteen
minutes each. They are then divided into number of frames. Heat: It is the average intensity value of the bird and can be
defined as:
III. DETECTION/TRACKING/FEATURE EXTRACTION 1
5
Recorded frames are used for detection, tracking, feature
extraction and clustering. Detection was implemented based Where is heat of kth bird and is the heat of bird in
on background subtraction using Running Average and frame i.
Morphological techniques [9] consisting of opening followed
by closure as[9]: Straightness Index: It is a measure of the discrepancy
between the actual path which is travelled by the bird and a
1 1 perfect straight segment and is defined as:

2 6
Where is background, is foreground, α is adaptive rate
(0.05), K is binary image and S is element structure.
, , , are erosion, dilation, opening and closure operators,
respectively.
Tracking algorithm was developed based on labeling and
component connectivity. Eight-connected neighborhood
was used for connectivity. Number of frames including the
bird with same label are added together to generate the
trajectory of the bird. The process of detection and tracking
algorithm is shown in Fig. 2.
Features were extracted from already tracked bird/bats.
Features include size, velocity, heat and straightness index.
These features are very effective in separating various
species. These features are described as follows:
Size: it is the average size of the bird, as
∑
Where is the straightness index of kth bird, is the
straight distance of bird k and is distance from starting
point to the present location of bird. The value of
straightness index is in the range from 0 to 1. Fig. 3 shows
results from detection/tracking algorithm where image (a)
show one track and image (b) show two tracks respectively.
IV. ANT CLUSTERING ALGORITHM (ACA)
Ant Colony-based clustering is a heuristic method for
clustering data inspired by behavior of ants, particularly for
clustering of unlabeled data sets. In this method, data is
projected from multi-dimensional space to a bidirectional
grid, in which ants are randomly move and pick up and
deposit items to and from specific cells.

1
3

Where is size of kth bird, is the size of bird in each

frame i and is the total number of the frames where bird
is present.
Velocity: it is the velocity of the bird based on the distance (a) (b)
travelled in camera view and can be determined as: Figure 3. Sample results of detection and tracking algorithm

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 The common feature of both real and artificial ants is
collection and drop-off. However, real ants collect corpses to
make their nest cleaner or take larvae to arrange them by size.
While artificial ants move data items that are laid out in an
artificial environment, and specially organize them in a
sorted fashion. The important feature of ACA is no priori
assumption on the number and size of clusters is needed.
Three different variations of ACA of LF model [8] are
implemented for application of avian clustering. In this
application the features extracted from track of birds/bats,
including size, velocity, heat and straightness index are
applied as the attributes for clustering problem.
A. Standard ACA (S-ACA)
The general idea of S-ACA is to pick up an item and
match with similar items in different locations. The carried
item is then deposited in a location where it contains most
similar items. There are some ants who are just responsible to
carry items and drop them off.
The probability that an unloaded random moving ant
picks up an item is given by:
Where is the perceived fraction of items in the
neighborhood of the ant and is a threshold constant.
For , 1, which means when there are not
many items in the neighborhood, then there is high
probability of picking up an item. Also for ,
0 , which indicate there is less probability for removing an
item from a mass area.
The probability that a randomly loaded moving ant,
drops that item in a certain location is given by
Where k is another threshold constant. In this case, if
f k then P 0 , therefore in none-dense area there is
less probability to deposit the item by ants. Also when
f k then P 1 , so the probability of item deposition is
high when there are many items in a given location. It
indicates items have a tendency to be dropped off in arena
where there are many items.
The perceived function proposed by LF is used to
calculate the similarity in the neighborhood of object xi
situated at site r as:
1 ,
max 1 ,0
Where is scaling of the dissimilarity, , is
dissimilarity between pair of items and 2 is the total number
of sites in the local area of interest.
Generally steps for grouping data by S-ACA are:
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• Projection from attribute space to item grid
• Calculate Perceived Function
• Pick up and drop off items based on probability
B. Different Speed ACA (DS-ACA)
Similar to S-ACA ants move randomly in the item space,
however the ants have different speeds in contrast to S-ACA
where there was same speed for all ants. The speed is
distributed uniformly in the interval 1, where
is the maximum speed and is defined as 6. This
speed affects the probability of pick up and drops off items
by ants according to Eqn. 10:
1 ,
max 1 ,0 10
Where corresponds to the number of units travelled per
time unit by an ant. Thus fast moving ants are not as
selective as slow or relaxed ants in their approximation of
the average resemblance of an item to its neighbors.
7 C. Short-term Memory ACA(SM-ACA)
This method is similar to S-ACA, with the difference that
ants have a short memory of a fixed size. By this way, ants
remember the last m dropped items with their locations. This
memory helps the ants during pick-up time, when comparing
carried item with those in the memory list. In this case the
ant goes toward the location of the memorized element most
similar to the one just collected. This behavior results to the
creation of a smaller number of statistically equivalent
clusters, since identical items have a lower probability of
starting a new cluster.
V. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
8 Videos are recorded using IR camera (FLIR SR-19) in
May- July 2011. Camera was deployed at Ottawa National
Wildlife Refuge in Ohio. The camera and location used in
this work is shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 respectively.
The recorded videos are transferred to Intel(R) Core™i7
processor for data processing. MATLAB 7.13.0 software is
used for developing the algorithms and data processing. First,
videos are converted to frames and they are forwarded to
detection and tracking algorithm. 150 tracks were used for
this experiment. Features (size, heat, velocity and straightness
index) are extracted for each track and then are applied to S-
ACA, DS-ACA and SM-ACA algorithms. The overall
process is shown in Fig. 6.
The parameters used in ACAs for this experiment are
9 shown in TABLE I. Different number of iterations is
performed to testing the algorithm. Fig. 7 shows the initial
data projection and final data clusters for the S-ACA. In this
experiment, Euclidian distance is used as the dissimilarity
between pairs of items.
870
 Figure 4. IR camera used in this Figure 5.Location of camera
work deployment (Ottawa NWR)
(a) (b)
Data Target Tracking
Acquisition Detection

Clustering Feature
Extraction
Figure 6. Overall process

TABLE I. Parameter Setting

Parameter Value
Number of ants 50 (c) (d)
Threshold constant k 0.1
Figure 7. Item projection by S-ACA a) Initial projection b) Projection after
Threshold constant k 0.15 10,000 iterations c) Projection after 100,000 iterations d) Projection after
Neighborhood size 4,8 1,000,000 iterations
Dissimilarity Scale 1.05
TABLE II. Total number of clusters in different iterations
Maximum velocity 6
Iteration
Memory Size 10 Technique
10,000 100,000 1,000,000
S-ACA ≥ 20 9 6
Table II shows the number of clustered created after DS-ACA ≥ 12 7 5
different number of iterations for each technique. It is shown
SM-ACA ≥ 14 6 4
that higher number of iteration will result in lower number of
clusters. This is true for all three methods. Also, DS-ACA
and SM-ACA are creating fewer clusters as compared to S-
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