honours project with $2,000 scholarship!! mobile app ... · honours project — with $2,000...
TRANSCRIPT
Honours Project — with $2,000 scholarship!!
Mobile app development for plant identification using DRONES
The ARC Centre for Mine Site Restoration (CMSR) has an exciting opportunity for a Curtin or UWA student to develop software using digital imagery from drones to build an APP to identify individual plants from a
3D plant community.
This project is ideal for students looking to undertake Honours studies directly applicable to plant ecolo-gy, and who are looking to gain practical, hands-on experience in app development and graphics pro-
gramming.
BACKGROUND
The answer to many key questions in plant ecology, such as patterns of species distribution, requires precise spatial information of individu-
als. New technologies combining computing algorithms with digital imagery from drones to automate plant censusing (identifying and item-
ising each individual), provides the potential for substantial advances in plant spatial ecology.
To gather precise spatial information for each individual in plant communities, ecologists have previously only been able to manually locate
the stem of each individual. Now, drones can be flown over an area and a 3D digital model of the area constructed with sufficient resolution
to not only locate each plant but also to resolve individual leaves and flowers. Automation of the identification of each individual plant is the
ultimate goal, but a key first step is developing an app to use on a handheld device to allow the refining and delimiting of those plants out-
lined in the 3D model.
THE PROJECT
This project provides an opportunity to facilitate the identification of individual plants from a 3D digital model of a plant community. The
project is to develop software for a handheld computing device (running Android or iOS) to allow the user to manually isolate and delimit
individual plants from the digital model, in the field. Noting that;
The bounding surface envelope of each individual plant would be edited and saved by the app
The app would allow various metadata (such as the species identity) to be saved for each individual.
The 3D model of the plant community would already be constructed from drone imagery, and this model would be resident on the handheld
device’s storage. The software should include the following components:
The app would need to handle models both with and without bounding envelopes for each plant being present.
The app would allow the user to pan, zoom and rotate the model, and edit the points that define the bounding outer envelope of
each individual plant.
This bounding envelope would essentially be a wireframe with each point representing the vertex of the shape.
This project would particularly appeal to students with interests in app development and graphics programming.
Please contact CMSR Manager Renee Young for more information: