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New iPhone app identifies trees from photos of their leaves

180 points| gmac | 15 years ago |leafsnap.com | reply

51 comments

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[+] apu|15 years ago|reply
This is my project =)

Leafsnap is a project I've been working on for about 2 years and we finally launched this week! It's a free app for the iPhone (with an iPad version coming next week and an Android version later in the summer) that contains very high-quality images and descriptions of the tree species of the Northeast US. It also has an automatic-recognition feature that uses computer vision to help users identify trees by taking a photo of a leaf.

This project is a joint collaboration between the computer science departments at Columbia University and the University of Maryland, and botanists at the Smithsonian Institution.

Please let me know what you think! Also, I'd be happy to answer any questions about the app or the recognition technology behind it.

[+] ronnier|15 years ago|reply
Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk show host, has requested such an app. He said he'd give an on-air interview to the person who makes it.

http://www.dennisprager.com/

[+] morganpyne|15 years ago|reply
Congratulations and well done. I'm just downloading it now. My first thoughts were if it was able to identify the 320+ species of native trees we have here in NZ. My second thought was to wonder if it can be trained by the users to learn new species? (I'm still waiting for the app to finish downloading so have not tried it yet). It would be great to expand your knowledge base by having user contributions, perhaps in a curated or weighted submission process.
[+] iandanforth|15 years ago|reply
I think this is awesome, I've been waiting for this technology for a long time. It's one of the first CV+Mobile apps I imagined having some day, and when you release the android version I'll finally get my wish! Thank you!

Question: Any thoughts to partnering with IQEngines to bring their adaptive image recognition engine and database together with yours?

[+] forgottenpaswrd|15 years ago|reply
I think it is an outstanding idea, CONGRATS for having done that!!.

It solves a real problem, maybe you can extend it to mushrooms with HUGE warnings(you don't want people eating something poisonous a computer recognized).

I have this little tree in my yard, I do not know for sure what it is, it seems it is a cherry tree but I'm dubious.

[+] EwanG|15 years ago|reply
Mega Congrats! Any chance of developing a similar app (paid would be fine) for identifying wildflowers? I have thousands of pictures of wilderness areas across the Western US, and I get tired of saying "and here's an example of... a yellow flower I saw a lot of that day" :-)
[+] GoodIntentions|15 years ago|reply
I have a family member that taught dendrology for 30 years.

He amazes me by being able to look at a leaf, bark or chunk of wood and tell what it is near instantly. If accurate, this is the sort of thing that will change the teaching process. I will tell him about it.

[+] jackowayed|15 years ago|reply
Any way I can get notified when the Android version comes?
[+] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
Nice. You need to add achievements to this. :-)
[+] yesbabyyes|15 years ago|reply
Great work! This is an app I have been waiting for. I'm looking forward to you covering other plants, flowers and mushrooms.

Another app I am waiting for along the same lines is Shazam for bird song!

[+] chrismealy|15 years ago|reply
Terrific news! I read the 2009 article and have been wondering about it.

Is it open source?

[+] tghw|15 years ago|reply
It seems your site is having some trouble with the load.
[+] phlux|15 years ago|reply
Can you just tell us what the recognition tech behind it is?
[+] lotusleaf1987|15 years ago|reply
This is really cool! I like it because I think it will actually encourage kids especially, and generally everyone, to take an interest in nature and the plants around them. Also, I'm sure it could be useful in identifying dangerous and safe plants. Keep up the good work!
[+] ataggart|15 years ago|reply
Having surpassed Star Trek's communicator, we seem to be well on our way towards the tricorder.
[+] Groxx|15 years ago|reply
Nah, I think we'll have that as soon as someone wires up a camera to Mechanical Turk.

"Looks like cancer." "Definitely Athlete's Foot." "It's not a tumor!" "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

Repeat 1000x, pull out the winners, and diagnose!

[+] epochwolf|15 years ago|reply
I don't think we quite have Star Trek communicators right. At least not the ones from Next Generation. Those seemed to be plot activated. You didn't always need to hit a button for them to make a call. Though they did drop calls like our modern smart phones.
[+] xutopia|15 years ago|reply
That's funny I wanted something similar to determine it based on the trunk of each tree. In Canada there are no leafs on trees half of the year and you can make some interesting edible syrups with certain trees.
[+] morganpyne|15 years ago|reply
Being into woodworking (lutherie specifically), I would kill for something that could identify species by samples of wood. I think this is a very different task and extremely difficult to achieve though. Sometimes even 2 experts disagree on the pedigree of a given piece of wood - visual inspection is simply not enough and nothing short of a detailed lab analysis can confirm some identifications. Variation of the wood from tree to tree of exactly the same species is large, at least you are dealing with relative consistency in the leaves.
[+] willwagner|15 years ago|reply
Awesome app. I can't wait to use it on our next hike.

I really wish there were more apps like this (and Shazam). Just off of the top of my head, i'd pay a reasonable amount of money to identify: bugs, fish, seashells, animal footprints, mushrooms, and I'm sure a whole lot more.

Being part of a hiking family with two small kids, the questions are endless and even if it were crowdsourced in some way (e.g. please identify this bug for karma), it could be handy learning tool for kids, getting them more excited about science at an early age.

[+] eiji|15 years ago|reply
Maybe a stupid question:

  Why isn't it open source?
[+] wallflower|15 years ago|reply
Love the About page. Nice personal connection.

http://leafsnap.com/about/

Ah memories of my 10th grade biology class (bug or leaf collection). The trusty Audubon Guide to North American Trees. It is really shocking that the HGTTG is coming true...

[+] kirpekar|15 years ago|reply
Superb -- fun app while hiking with my kid. I grew up in another country, so a lot of trees where I live are unknown to me.

Thanks

[+] ksolanki|15 years ago|reply
Very nice to see a good computer vision app make it to the market. This has certainly brought the future closer to us :)
[+] jenniart|15 years ago|reply
I really adore your about page with all of the photos of your team with leaves. Very fun and personal. :)
[+] eekfuh|15 years ago|reply
Does this use any type of location lookup? I wonder how beneficial that would be, either look at the persons location if they use the cam or grab it out of the exif data, so that you can better determine the tree by where it of could be grown.
[+] apu|15 years ago|reply
Not right now, but we store the GPS with all images. Once we expand our coverage to more of the world, we will probably start using the GPS to help narrow down the list of possibilities.

However, the app does let you filter the list of species shown to "New York" or "Washington DC" or "The Northeast".

[+] pshapiro|15 years ago|reply
Wow, I was just thinking about how to accomplish this idea yesterday.
[+] phlux|15 years ago|reply
It would be great if you could take a pic of a tree leaf, and i will capture the geoloc of the pic as well and plot where that tree is on the map - and start tracking where all types of trees live.
[+] apu|15 years ago|reply
This is exactly what we are doing. We're working with botanists at the Smithsonian Institution in DC who are very interested in this kind of data.
[+] lsb|15 years ago|reply
Even greater to use hi-res satnav for that! We can assess water health that way, it'd be fascinating to do similarly for forests.
[+] coldarchon|15 years ago|reply
I'm just happy you didn't make one for insects. Just imagine an app that doesn't recognize a running bug and the owner of the iPhone kills it after 3rd try to get a better result ..