USING AI TO FIGHT INVASIVE SPECIES

The presence of Asian Hornets in the UK needs to be taken seriously due to their severe threat to our ecological security as well as their impact on food sources . Experience from Europe show us that the management costs to this country could exceed £7million pounds a year.

We've spent the last few years studying AH behaviour, including multiple research trips to Jersey, a hot-spot for Asian Hornet activity, with the invaluable support of Alastair Christie BSc (Senior Scientific Officer for invasive species for the Government of Jersey). Having recognised the severity of the threat, our Co-Founder Matthew has been tirelessly pioneering innovative solutions aimed at addressing the imminent threat of this insect spreading throughout the UK mainland.

Pollenize has developed Hornet AI, the program that powers our Nest Sweeper app. With object detection computer vision models the technology can detect and monitor the presence of Asian hornets. It provides us with real-time information, enabling the team, and the relevant authorities to take immediate defensive action.

Before Hornet AI technology became ‘app ready’, Matthew worked on prototypes and hired Ver Facil Limited in Bodmin, a specialist in remote monitoring solutions, to connect the low-power, long-range wireless LoRaWAN network to the alert system. This system allowed the devices to work without internet connection. To train the model, specialist annotation software from Encord was used. It trained a robust model with rectangular boxes on 1,500 images for each of the following types of insects: Vespa velutina, Vespa crabro, Vespula vulgaris, and Apis mellifera. These images were obtained from iNaturalist, and a faster R-CNN model was trained. Faster R-CNN is an improved version of RCNN (Region-based Convolutional Neural Network).

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