Download Interactive Plant Species Identification with Mobile

Interactive Plant Species
Identification with Mobile Devices
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
www.floraincognita.com
Motivation
Global biodiversity
is rapidly declining
Previous Research
&
Scientists and NGOs raise alarm about the
decreasing species knowledge in our society
• Technological research mainly focussed on fully automated species
classification through image recognition with debatable achievements
• Educational research focussed mainly on supporting decisions on
dichotomous keys by example images, drawings, and simplified
explanations but keeping the traditional sequence of dichotomous keys
United Nations (UN) propagate a decade (2011–2020) of biodiversity
to raise social awareness for the importance of biodiversity and
the responsibility for an sustainable life-style
Plant species identification today
• requires using a sequence of dichotomous keys
Timeliness of the Problem
• is often challenging and time consuming for botanists and is almost
impossible for non-botanists
• Constant availability of portable devices incorporating a myriad
of precise sensors provides the basis for more sophisticated
ways of guiding and assissting people in species identification
Project Goals and Approach
• Approaching trends and technologies such as augmented reality, data
glasses, or 3D scans give this research topic a long-term perspective
• Developing a semi-automated user-interactive plant species
identification process and application for mobile devices
On-site and real-time identification of plant
species with mobile devices
Flora Incognita server with
species and traits repository
(3) Query additional sources
for corresponding habitat
information
(2) Transferring image and meta-data
Mobile devices
with wireless
internet connection
(e.g., position, direction, date,
device type, user type) to the
project server
External data sources:
land use and habitat
maps, geological maps,
species distribution data,
phenological data
(4) [Iteratively] Determining most relevant trait and
prompting the user for its acquisition (e.g., „mark
the flower in the image“, „take additional picture
of special plant part“, „check for thorns“)
(1) Taking an initial image
of the plant through the
project app
User with mobile
device and project app
(6) [Upon Match]
Record traits in research
data repositories, log match in
databases of nature
conservation authorities
(5) [Upon Match]
Send species
details to device
Databases of nature conservation
authorities
Research
data repositories
Work Areas at the MPI-BGC
Area I: Plant traits repository and image dataset
Project Facts
• Development and implemenation of a repository covering characteristic plant traits
• Analysing plant traits variability via literature research and field investigations
• Set up a standardised image dataset for
testing and evaluating image processing
methods
Duration: 2014–2019
Collaborators and Partners
Area II: Incremental plant identification process & prototype evaluation
• Development and realization of an incremental, semi-automatic plant identification process
• Developement of didactically optimized user interactions during the classification process
• Development and realization of user studies to evaluate the difficulty and the accuracy of manually
determined plant traits
• Detailed evaluation of the prototype application with different user groups
Funded by
Area III: Field mapping system and user platform
• Development of strategies and requirements for an automated field mapping system (Partner: TLUG)
• Development of strategies and requirements for platform to involve interested professional and hobby
botanists
Jana Wäldchen
Michael Rzanny
Angelika Thuille
Ernst-Detlef Schulze
Patrick Mäder
Marco Seeland
Nedal Alaqraa
Funding: ~1.92M € (total)
Nils Würfel
David Wiesner