Drones and AI for mushroom hunting

Would there be any ethical concerns for training AI models to detect mushrooms so you dont have to put as much effort into searching physically.
The legalities are all there, theres few issues regarding using them even on public lands in my state as long as you're not harassing wildlife and people with them, and you only need permits and registrations if they're over like that 250g mark.
I'm just curious to how much you would piss off the local and other foragers by using technology this way and "taking away from the experience".

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  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    A drone seems like a over engineered backfiring solution, why not an RC car? Even better, since you still have to go by to harvest why now just carry a phone with one of the many mushroom identification apps?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      An rc car can't navigate off trail terrain worth a frick. The idea is to train an AI model to given decently reliable positive hits to investigate rather than walking the areas for hours starting at the ground and the trees. A drone is much more efficient plus you could set it up to log what and where the pictures and scans it has taken are from so you arn't looking at shit twice like you may do in an extensive outing.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        A drone that can fly for hours will have a very hard time navigating trough a forest, source: I build drones.

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'd think all the trees would be the issue, not what anyone might think. Have drones come so far that you don't have to worry about flying them in dense woodland?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Small drone have less than a 16 inch span while flying. If you're careful you could do well in many wooded areas. Deciduous forests might be more difficult with the large amounts of shit like buck thorn taking up all the ground space with very little inbetween, but the tops of buckthorns are 10-15 feet max and old growth forests have canopies in excess of 50 feet in most places around where I live. theres a decently happy median where you should be able to fly with minimal issues between them. above the canopy wont work past around mid may anyways so its not even worth considering.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Chief, those berrypickers are up to sumtin.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      They are probably being used by some wildlife biologists, definitely YouTube people and documentary makers, tv and film producers.

      We are talking about regulated airspace though and privacy considerations. These drones could be used to monitor armed government personnel or their facilities.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Furthermore, given recent events in Eastern Europe, these civilian drones are considered a legal threat. They bombed the darn roof of the Kremlin with one.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          OP, mushroom hunting/foraging is pretty low tech if you know the right times and the right fungus to look for. The more you know about the local fungus, roots, berries, nuts, etc the more abundance you have. As you have many options to choose from and you know what to look for, as well as what is safe and what isn’t. You can even grill mushrooms like fish or wild game and get good protein.

          All you need is the knowledge and practice, then you can leave your campsite or basement or whatever, go out innawoods, and come back with lots of food. As if you were hunting or fishing.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            Better yet, if you are going fishing or hunting anyways, you can keep an eye out for wild plants to eat. Even as a snack.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            Yeah and you could say that about many things. Technology can improve it nearly anything.

          • 10 months ago
            Anonymous

            None of that means shit if youre on public land and are the 50th person looking. Better to have any advantage you can to secure your loot after boomers with no jobs and hobbies come through.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Ya know, if you want to false flag don't be recording the false flag before it happens. It's like recording the twin towers on 9/11, before the first plane flew in.

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    It would be a better idea to use drones to fly high above the tree line, to scout for stands of trees that the mushroom associates with.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      AI is advanced enough for that plus contrast between colors even at distances. I mean frick, if the chinks have AI that can pull up your fricking social credit file in the worlds I dont think mushrooms being seen on the forest floor.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        What are you trying to say

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Shoot. I missed part of that last sentence i guess. I meant to say if chinks can manage that i dont think contrast of mushrooms against the background of the forest floor will be much if a challenge. Its colors and shapes at worst. You could train in the associations with trees and types of decaying wood too. Decaying wood is very distinctive for many years.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        That stuffs easy man, I've worked with some people. Just consider anything "private" related to DOB, Job, University etc is logged by either your government or a spy agency.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          I meant like off a picture of your face all that data can be pulled.

  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Probably, but it'd be a significant waste of time in the long run. Pretty sure a kid would do a better job than a supervised ML algorithm.
    Not only that, but you have to think about the weight for those components. You realistically would not have a 250g drone by the end of the day.

    It's definitely possible to do this, but it's just really fricking stupid and not worth it at all.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      To elaborate a little on the weight factor: You would need an actual flight computer (different from a flight controller) in order to run something like that, which would not only slurp up more power, but would add a significant amount of weight. Off the top of my head, something like a raspberry pi 4 (if you really wanted to do this, I'd just recommend that since it's very beginner friendly) weighs roughly 46 grams

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        I never planned to have all the processing onboard. Imaging could be transfered over cellular to some computer or even both my GF and I's computers to run any of the heavy stuff. Or even my laptop might be able to run enough onsite.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Its really not that stupid either. Ive reallt thought this through. The theory is pretty solid, the execution may be a little harder. Many drones also have gps that accurate enough for this purpose, so even if a wall is hit onsite for processing all you have to do is take it home and run the program and any postive hits will have gps coordinates and headings.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Yolov3 models are pretty fast. The thing is that if it pings on something you can always float down or just walk there yourself. Like the biggest problem is the fact that the software for the drone isn't really meant for this stuff, so you need to steam out of the drone to something that can run analysis on it.

        My biggest concern as I'm inscribing bounding boxes on mushrooms is just the fact that those fricks are smol.

        The drone that we got has a 4k gimballed camera and streams in 1080p. I guess we'll know once we do some proper field testing.

  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'd be concerned about establishing a ground truth your algorithm can use to detect mushrooms. You would need to go through all or at least a good proportion of the photos it took and accurately label which ones have mushrooms in them to teach it to detect them itself, which sounds difficult.

    The other option (that might work) is turning to the recently released google computer vision foundation model, which may be able to detect mushrooms in general but might have an issue with the specific ones you want.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Im using a mushroom hunting facebook group to source learning materials for it. I have in ground and tree mushrooms up close and far and were gonna train it up well to start, about 800 pictures and see how accurate it is with new pictures.

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Drones in the sky to search for burned areas, boots on the ground with IR cameras

    White spots are morels

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    The model is training. With any luck we might do a test run this weekend.

  9. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I WILL RAPE YOUR LITTLE RC HELICOPTER TOY. IF YOU EVER SEE A DRONE IN THE WOODS, SHOOT IT DOWN

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      And commit a felony.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        I'm sure the FFA will send someone right out to take the report of a screeching PrepHoleist who was using a drone to look for shrooms

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          My thumbs are moronic. Meant to say FAA, though I suppose the FFA would be more readily available, kek

  10. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Drone gays, kys

  11. 10 months ago
    Borderlands

    Mushrooms you mean shrooms, and weed patches.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      no, i dont do drugs. i'm talking edible mushrooms

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        >edibles
        Whatever you say, druggie

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          >has never had lobster or oyster mushrooms from the wild
          >never understood that foraging on public lands is difficult because of boomergays getting up at 4am to get to the parks and lands at 5am and are gone before noon with half the mushrooms in the park, then illegally sell them because they're buddy buddy with anyone who saw and the rangers and dnr

          ya ok, i'm gonna take any edge i can get its its gonna be a year before I can even think about getting a dog for this
          also i'd never trust eating small cap mushrooms i didnt grow myself, for the amount you get and what that offers you isnt worth the risk. if you want magic mushroom just fricking cultivate them

  12. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Cursed thread.
    Drones are the new Bluetooth speaker, tech trash doesn't belong out

  13. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Interesting challenge OP. Given how many RCtestflight videos of Ardupilot doing absolutely bonkers things with automated flight, I believe this is possible. The image detection is of course another problem, but I imagine this is solved too. Fit the drone with one of those new weird-ass silent-as-frick props and you won't even disturb people that much. Avoid trees? I would guess LIDAR or ultrasound can do that (although that would frick with bats and other animals so don't do it), but with a couple of cameras and some software you can probably avoid trees just from image analysis.

    So the tech is probably mature. Now for the ethics. Disturbing animals, nature, and people would obviously make it less ethical. But I believe this can be overcome. Is it ethical to use a machine to automate a task? My take is, as long as it's legal, it's permitted. Of course it goes against the "spirit" of mushroom "hunting", but unless there is a law that says mushrooms are only allowed to be harvested with certain methods, go do it. Is it "ethical" to use an e-bike to cover more ground while foraging? Is it ethical to train your dog to do the mushroom hunting for you?

    Actually come to think of it, screw technology and just train a dog.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      No place for a dog now since apartment and you cant have unleashed dogs on public land outside of hunting seasons in my state.

  14. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    you should have a nice day for even having thought of that. just go to the store and buy mushrooms you fricking troglodyte

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