LostPaw: Finding Lost Pets using a Contrastive Learning-based Transformer with Visual Input

Abstract: Losing pets can be highly distressing for pet owners, and finding a lost pet is often challenging and time-consuming. An artificial intelligence-based application can significantly improve the speed and accuracy of finding lost pets. To facilitate such an application, this study introduces a contrastive neural network model capable of accurately distinguishing between images of pets. The model was trained on a large dataset of dog images and evaluated through 3-fold cross-validation. Following 350 epochs of training, the model achieved a test accuracy of 90%. Furthermore, overfitting was avoided, as the test accuracy closely matched the training accuracy. Our findings suggest that contrastive neural network models hold promise as a tool for locating lost pets. This paper presents the foundational framework for a potential web application designed to assist users in locating their missing pets. The application will allow users to upload images of their lost pets and provide notifications when matching images are identified within its image database. This functionality aims to enhance the efficiency and accuracy with which pet owners can search for and reunite with their beloved animals.