Does anyone know a gizmo that will identify plants from a photo?

Compared with other things that have been developed - e.g. to
distinguish between two twin brothers - distinguishing between plant
species seems rather easy, yet I cannot find any such thing referred
to on the web.

JOHN BIBBY (York)

On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:51:48 -0700 (PDT), johnbibby
wrote:

Does anyone know a gizmo that will identify plants from a photo?

Compared with other things that have been developed - e.g. to
distinguish between two twin brothers - distinguishing between plant
species seems rather easy, yet I cannot find any such thing referred
to on the web.


Posting a request on here with a link to a clear photograph on a site
such flickr seems to work quite well for most things.

Whilst there are some useful image libraries online and of course
Google, I am not aware of an image ID matching application. For wild
plants I have used this site for some years -
http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/content/SEARCH.ASP - which
requires some thought and input but has proved quite useful.

rbel

It sounds easy, but is it? If you are distinguishing between human faces, you have some fixed feature to start with - eg your computer can probably identify eyes relatively easily, and from there start making measurements to mouth and nose and chin and so on and therefore pick up differences. But there's a lot more variety in a plant leaf or flower than in a human face, and it may not be easy for the computer to get a fix on a feature to start making comparisons. And that's assuming you have taken a carefully posed photo of just a flower and a leaf, rather than a shot of the whole plant with leaves and flowers all over the place.

On 23 July, 23:14, kay wrote:
johnbibby;930879 Wrote:

Does anyone know a gizmo that will identify plants from a photo?

Compared with other things that have been developed *- e.g. to
distinguish between two twin brothers - distinguishing between plant
species seems rather easy, yet I cannot find any such thing referred
to on the web.

JOHN BIBBY (York)

It sounds easy, but is it? If you are distinguishing between human
faces, you have some fixed feature to start with - eg your computer can
probably identify eyes relatively easily, and from there start making
measurements to mouth and nose and chin and so on and therefore pick up
differences. But there's a lot more variety in a plant leaf or flower
than in a human face, and it may not be easy for the computer to get a
fix on a feature to start making comparisons. And that's assuming you
have taken a carefully posed photo of just a flower and a leaf, rather
than a shot of the whole plant with leaves and flowers all over the
place.

--
kay

Hi Kay

You may be right, and it may notr be as easy as I suggest. However,
the equivalent with people is that all I'm asking for is a gizmo that
will see a person and will say "That's a human" i.e. to identify the
species, not which particular member of that species.

It's true that face-recognition uses 'landmarks' such as eyes, nose,
mouth. But surely something could be done e.g. by shape of leaf or
fruit.

Even if it is difficult, I would expect the question to have been
POSED before, yet I can find no mention of it on the web. (I'm sure
it's there somewhe searching is difficult when you are unsure what
Google terms to search on.)

Thanks for your comments
JOHN

In message
,
johnbibby writes
On 23 July, 23:14, kay wrote:
johnbibby;930879 Wrote:

Does anyone know a gizmo that will identify plants from a photo?

Compared with other things that have been developed *- e.g. to
distinguish between two twin brothers - distinguishing between plant
species seems rather easy, yet I cannot find any such thing referred
to on the web.

JOHN BIBBY (York)

It sounds easy, but is it? If you are distinguishing between human
faces, you have some fixed feature to start with - eg your computer can
probably identify eyes relatively easily, and from there start making
measurements to mouth and nose and chin and so on and therefore pick up
differences. But there's a lot more variety in a plant leaf or flower
than in a human face, and it may not be easy for the computer to get a
fix on a feature to start making comparisons. And that's assuming you
have taken a carefully posed photo of just a flower and a leaf, rather
than a shot of the whole plant with leaves and flowers all over the
place.

--
kay

Hi Kay

You may be right, and it may notr be as easy as I suggest. However,
the equivalent with people is that all I'm asking for is a gizmo that
will see a person and will say "That's a human" i.e. to identify the
species, not which particular member of that species.

It's true that face-recognition uses 'landmarks' such as eyes, nose,
mouth. But surely something could be done e.g. by shape of leaf or
fruit.

Even if it is difficult, I would expect the question to have been
POSED before, yet I can find no mention of it on the web. (I'm sure
it's there somewhe searching is difficult when you are unsure what
Google terms to search on.)

The question has been posed. Try searching for automated leaf
identification.

There are about half a million species of plants, each of which varies.
So you'd need a pretty large training dataset, and a pretty big
database. If you want to identify cultivated plants, which are often
highly divergent from their parents, and/or of hybrid origins, that's
even more data needed.

Working from photographs of say leaves loses information. I distinguish
Solidago canadensis from Solidago gigantea by leaf texture (and both of
these are species complexes, not single species). I distinguish
Persicaria mitis from Persicaria hydropiper by taste.

Thanks for your comments
JOHN

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:51:48 -0700 (PDT), johnbibby
wrote:

Does anyone know a gizmo that will identify plants from a photo?

Compared with other things that have been developed - e.g. to
distinguish between two twin brothers - distinguishing between plant
species seems rather easy, yet I cannot find any such thing referred
to on the web.

JOHN BIBBY (York)

It is an image classification issue. It is far from easy unless the
images have been reduced to common sets of measures. That is why
facial recognition systems work so well. They do not compare the
images, they just compare the sets of measures. Common sets of
measures for images of plant species are not well defined apart from
the original descriptions. The actual images must be compared.

Try the image facilities in my EasyNN-plus software if you want to
experiment.

Steve

--
Neural network software applications, help and support.

Neural Planner Software www.NPSL1.com