WK 38 - Unlocking AI for Automated Monitoring of Insects

Session Description: What AI-assisted automated monitoring systems exist, how do they work, and how can you use them to monitor insects?

This workshop will address these questions through a show-and-tell of cutting-edge hardware technologies and AI methods, followed by a panel discussion on how we take these technologies from proof of concept to wide-scale application.

Insect populations in parts of the world are undergoing rapid changes in response to a range of factors. It is key that we use all the tools at our disposal to understand these changes and their drivers, but also to evaluate mitigation actions to inform conservation management and national and international policy.

Advances in both hardware technologies and AI algorithms have led to the development of automated systems for monitoring insects. Hardware systems combine cameras, miniature computers, compact data storage and solar power to collect images of visiting insects over extended periods. Hardware units can often be deployed in remote areas, with little need for human intervention. Processing large volumes of imagery is a major challenge, but AI methods can now locate insects in images and classify them - often to species-level. Modern hardware and AI methods offer a powerful tool to support insect monitoring, but they are not yet embedded in national and international monitoring schemes.

The workshop will open with a short introduction to the field of automated monitoring insects. We will then open up the room for our “show and tell” where developers of the latest hardware and AI tools will provide hands-on demonstrations of their innovations. Participants will be free to explore all of the systems, ask questions of the researchers and developers, and understand what is needed for them to use these tools in their research.

Realising the potential of these technologies requires benchmarking against existing methods, widening access to hardware and AI methods, and making these tools available for all ecologists. Our expert panel will discuss how they think this transition from proof of concept, to revolutionary tool, might be achieved. Finally, the audience will be able to put questions to the panel related to thorny issues of data sharing and transparency, taxonomic uncertainty and “lumping”, academic entrepreneurialism, education and training, and transnational inclusivity.