HUMAN: Hierarchical Universal Modular ANnotator

TL;DR

HUMAN is a versatile, modular web-based annotation tool that supports complex, interdependent annotations on text and images, integrating machine learning and a user-friendly interface.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, hierarchical annotation framework with a deterministic state machine and easy task customization, enhancing annotation efficiency and inter-task dependency management.

Findings

Supports multiple data types including text and images

Allows chaining of annotation tasks via a state machine

Facilitates integration of machine learning algorithms

Abstract

A lot of real-world phenomena are complex and cannot be captured by single task annotations. This causes a need for subsequent annotations, with interdependent questions and answers describing the nature of the subject at hand. Even in the case a phenomenon is easily captured by a single task, the high specialisation of most annotation tools can result in having to switch to another tool if the task only slightly changes. We introduce HUMAN, a novel web-based annotation tool that addresses the above problems by a) covering a variety of annotation tasks on both textual and image data, and b) the usage of an internal deterministic state machine, allowing the researcher to chain different annotation tasks in an interdependent manner. Further, the modular nature of the tool makes it easy to define new annotation tasks and integrate machine learning algorithms e.g., for active learning. HUMAN comes with an easy-to-use graphical user interface that simplifies the annotation task and management.