On 27 September 2011 02:39, Paul Houle
<paul@ontology2.com> wrote:
On 9/26/2011 1:32 PM, Andre Engels wrote:
>
> Every small category is a part of a big category. A system such as
> this will not be able to specify plant species, but it might well be
> able to find pictures of plants. If it then gives a list of plant
> pictures that are not in some plant category, animal pictures that are
> not in animal category, buildings that are not in a regional building
> category, maps that are not in a map of category, paintings that are
> not in a painter category, famous people that are not in a people
> category etcetera, it could deliver those to volunteers to further
> classify.
>
The ImageCLEF people are getting such great results because
they're working in a specific and limited domain
The goal is to identify plants by looking at their leaves. An
obvious application is to build this into a mobile device -- you could
snap a picture of a leaf on a plant or remove a leaf and photograph it
against a good surface and it tells you what sort of plant you're
looking at. This would be a great tool for any gardener's toolbox,
anywhere on earth.
I be cautious of species indentification base solely on leaf structure, while I dont doubt the skills of the people doing the work nor that they arent being meticulious but any botanist will tell you that species identification relies on multiple factors including plant structure, flowering details etc as an exampe just look at the
350+ species of grevillea I'd be very adverse to using such a tool for identification of species in an encyclopeadic context. It may be work for genus level but even there we'd be finding false positives.
I'm looking forward to seeing people solve more problems like this.