Category

AI – Automatic Recognition

Sunbird Images are preeminent pioneers in automatic species recognition which accounts for both, image and sound recognition. In collaboration with Isoperla Ltd. the very first bird sound recognition app ever marketed named “Bird Song Id UK” was launched in 2013. This was long before machine learning became a popular tool to enable automatic recognition and together with its fellow sound recognition apps tailored to different countries, the apps have been downloaded over a million times.

Also, image recognition, e.g. by taking a picture of a flower, has been greatly improved since our first steps. We now use top in their class experts from Israel, The USA, and Germany from the core Sunbird team trained by Silicon Valley or University of Jerusalem specialists to build State-of-the-art species recognition software with the help of machine learning algorithms. Nowadays many of our apps use AI to identify species. As an example we picked PilzSnap which has become a reference in the German speaking countries where mushroom hunting is a popular pastime in autumn. This app is a particular good example for an AI Id tool which isn’t simply a “hit one button” auto recognition app (which populate the app stores but are mostly useless giving misleading or plain wrong results). Instead the app has been developed with help of mushroom experts narrowing down species before the AI kicks in. This not only creates far better results the app is also much safer to handle when used for forraging purposes. Please get in touch if you need a tailor made AI solution for your own planned device or app.

Sunbird apps

PilzSnap!

Identify mushrooms with automatic recognition

Identification using Ai

Developed by biologists with over 30 years of experience in mushroom identification

 

Sunbird Apps

PilzSnap!

Mushroom hunting is popular across all ages. For many people, it is a must in autumn, to hike in the now colourful forests equipped with a basket and to hunt for mushrooms for a nice meal or a suitable side dish for, e.g., game dishes. Many mushroom species are however very small and therefore, unsuitable for collecting and consumption anyway. Most mushroom hunters concentrate on the common species, which include the most popular edible mushrooms. To give the not so experienced mushroom hunter an introduction to this culinary pastime, Sunbird Images has developed the app PilzSnap. It comes with automatic image recognition and contains all significant very poisonous and the important first quality edible mushrooms. It is extremely important to note that even the best optical recognition will never replace the knowledge of a mushroom expert or longtime mushroom hunter. Optical detection cannot detect such important characteristics as scent or microscopic features.  

identification key

PilzSnap has an AI based automatic image recognition. For safety reasons and to reduce the possibility of confusion, a hybrid solution was chosen. The user first selects a mushroom category before the recognition function is started. This has the advantage that a separate neural network could be programmed and trained for each category, which further improves recognition. 

challenges

Difficulties in creating the perfect digital mushroom guide with AI 

Make a difference to already established mushroom guides on the app market

Avoid confusion of poisonous  mushrooms with edible species 

How to address mushroom images taken from above not showing species distinctive traits below cap such as gills? 

Detection

PilzSnap can automatically detect all important mushrooms and the results of the detection function are displayed as a list of images. In addition, this list uses the so-called traffic light colours (coloured boxes) to indicate whether it is a poisonous mushroom, an inedible mushroom or an edible mushroom. Information such as location, time and GPS coordinates are automatically recorded. With the help of stored GPS data, the exact growth location can be found again on the next walk or in the following year. 

 

Solution

Sunbird came up with the following to tackle challenges 

  • Preselection of easily assignable categories to correctly assign images from species taken from above
     
  • Preselection of groups very different in hazardness concerning selection of species within a group
     
  • Build AI with newest technology developed in collaborating High Tech center in Israel
      
  • 500,000 training images carefully identified by mushroom expert personnel 

Information

The app offers extensive information about each mushroom species. In addition to numerous significant pictures and a summary, there is information about characteristics of the respective species with a description of appearance, spore color, distribution, ecology as well as possibilities of confusion with other species and of course edibility. In addition, similar species can be displayed through an additional function. 

 

Lexicon

Optionally, a comprehensive mushroom lexicon is available as an In-app purchase for the app, which the user can use independently of the identification function to learn more about mushrooms or to browse through the wonderful images. 

 

Go to PilzSnap!