China’s modern day use for facial popularity: identifying pandas

Giant pandas are instantly recognizable as a species, but their uniform black and white markings makes them pretty anonymous as individuals. At least, to human eyes.

Not so for synthetic intelligence, as researchers in China have evolved an AI-powered facial reputation app which can identify precise pandas.

The app is available on the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China, wherein visitors will soon be capable of use it to identify any of the facility’s dozens of captive giant pandas, and discover more facts approximately them. The app’s creators additionally wish the software could be a boon for scientists, who can use it to song the bears inside the wild.

 

“The app and database will assist us acquire extra precise and well-rounded records at the populace, distribution, a long time, gender ratio, start and deaths of wild pandas, who stay in deep mountains and are hard to track,” Chen Peng, a researcher who co-authored the paper Giant Panda Face Recognition Using Small Database, informed Xinhua News.

“It will without a doubt assist us improve efficiency and effectiveness in conservation and control of the animals,” stated Chen.