Developing an AI-powered app to identify invasive bugs

A team member using a 3D imaging system to take images of stink bugs from many angles to train the AI model inside the app. This requires several hundred images per species. Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop an app that will help keep brown marmorated stink bugs out of Australia, an invasive species with the potential to wipe out more than 300 different species of plants if it made it past quarantine. The app, being developed for the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE), is based on a prototype co-funded by Microsoft to identify seeds of noxious weedy daisies, using AI to identify stink bug species based on thousands of specimens held in CSIRO's National Research Collections Australia. DAWE is now trialling the app in its quarantine stations.