Abstract

This study addresses the growing need for scalable solutions to monitor domestic and stray animals in urban environments. The objective is to develop and evaluate a real-time animal detection system using transfer learning and lightweight object detection models. The methodology includes the adaptation of a custom dataset with annotated images of cats and dogs under real-world conditions, followed by preprocessing, data augmentation, and model fine-tuning. Two architectures, SSD-MobileNet and YOLOv26s, were trained and evaluated using standard metrics such as precision, recall, F1-score, and mAP, as well as operational indicators like inference speed and system responsiveness. The best-performing model was integrated into a web-based platform with real-time detection, mobile access, and automated alerts. Results show that YOLOv26s outperforms SSD-MobileNet, achieving higher precision and recall while significantly reducing false positives and improving background discrimination. The system demonstrates near real-time performance suitable for monitoring applications and effective deployment across different input sources. The discussion findings highlight that integrating detection models with notification and visualization tools enhances practical applicability. Although SSD-MobileNet is suitable for low-resource environments, YOLOv26s provides a better balance between accuracy and reliability, making it more appropriate for real-world intelligent monitoring systems.

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