Artificial intelligence to track UK invasive plant species

Artificial intelligence is being enlisted in the fight against invasive plants, as experts try to design a system that makes problem species easier to track. Scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and Birmingham based company Keen AI are developing a new artificial intelligence system to quickly survey areas such as roadsides for invasive species of plant. Plants such as Japanese knotweed can cause damage in the UK, but finding and tracking their spread can be expensive and time-consuming, the experts said. The new scheme will use a high-speed camera on top of a vehicle to survey up to 120 miles of roadside vegetation a day. The images will be tagged with their GPS location and uploaded onto an online platform, where UKCEH ecologists will identify the plants in the photographs.