Our smart camera will allow users to take pictures of any plant and it will provide useful insights on the plant, including information on it’s species
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Future Minds
Innovation Fest 2025
About Future Minds
UN SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Empowered and Driven:
Delivering Solutions for Global Issues
Goal 3 – Good Health & Well-being: Ensuring people stay safe in nature by avoiding harmful plants. Additionally, learning about ecosystems fosters mental well-being and encourages outdoor activities that are both safe and educational.
Goal 9 – Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure: Reflected in our use of image recognition and smart technology to develop an efficient, real-time identification system. By integrating cutting-edge tools with environmental science, we aim to modernize the way we engage with and protect nature.
Goal 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities: By promoting urban biodiversity conservation and sustainable interactions with nature. Through encouraging the preservation of native species while identifying invasive ones that may threaten ecosystems, the app helps create a healthier and more balanced environment.
Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption & Production: Supported through EcoVerse’s ability to inform users about plant toxicity and protection laws. By reducing accidental harm to plants, we contribute to a more sustainable and ethical approach to nature.
Goal 15 – Life on Land: is addressed by educating people on plants, promoting biodiversity awareness and conservation. By fostering responsible environmental behaviour, EcoVerse contributes to long-term ecosystem preservation.
Goal 17 – Partnerships for the Goals: highlights the importance of collaboration between technology experts, conservation groups, and government agencies. By working together, we can refine our database and make EcoVerse a truly impactful tool for environmental education and protection.
THE STORY BEGAN
DESIGN STORY
Challenges
- We struggled to align our schedules to set up group meetings due to multiple factors, such as living far away from the university, or having clashing timetables. - We struggled to get hardware items for our project, due to the expense of some of them. - Ensuring accurate image recognition of diverse plant species, especially those with similar visual features. - Current limitations of the plant database to UK species only, reducing usability for international users until global expansion is implemented. - Designing a user-friendly touchscreen interface that caters to both technical users (e.g., researchers) and casual users (e.g., hikers or students). - Maintaining strong battery life and portability for outdoor use in remote or rugged locations. Managing inconsistent environmental conditions (like poor lighting or background noise) that impact image quality and recognition accuracy. - Keeping plant classifications and ecological information up to date to reflect any scientific or conservation-related changes.
Solution
- Members were able to compromise, and we all identified a gap in our timetables where we would be able to meet up and work on the project. - We secured hardware support through our partnership with BCU, helping us access essential components without exceeding our budget. - We improved image recognition by training our model on diverse, high-quality datasets and applying various techniques. - We built the database to be modular, allowing us to add plant species from other countries in future updates. - We developed a clean and intuitive user interface based on feedback from both expert and casual users. - We selected a high power battery pack to be attached to the camera, allowing the camera to last as long as possible. - We implemented image pre-processing and on-screen prompts to help users capture clearer photos in various conditions. - We included an update feature so plant data and classifications can be regularly refreshed as new research becomes available.
Use Case
- Outdoor enthusiasts: Although outdoor enthusiasts may be familiar with most plants, they may be unaware of protected species. They may also require information on legality behind different species of plants to make sure they’re allowed to take them, leading to responsible decision making. - Hikers and nature lovers: They explore nature but can often fail to identify species accurately. They require a simple and intuitive way to learn about plants whilst also receiving useful insights. - Farmers and landowners: They may face challenges in identifying invasive plants and beneficial plants. They need a solution to manage their crop/land efficiently while promoting sustainable agricultural practices. - Tourists: They may be curious about local nature but might not have any specialised knowledge about it. They would need an easy to use and very portable for quick identification and educational insights during their travelling.
TECHNOLOGIES
List of Essential Tools and Technologies
THE PROCESS
PROTOTYPE DESIGN
The Ecoverse digital camera represents a state-of-the-art tool tailored for plant lovers, researchers, and conservationists throughout the UK. Its advanced image recognition technology provides detailed information about the species, genus, and origin of known plant species that are native to the United Kingdom. Its database currently only contains documented plants, but plans are in place to expand globally in the future.
Ecoverse helps users appreciate the biodiversity around them, whether they are exploring rural landscapes, gardens, or forests. The camera evaluates the health of the plant by capturing a picture, spotting any indications of illness, infection, or environmental stress. Ecoverse will issue a warning if a plant is judged to be poisonous, invasive, or dangerous to people or animals. Furthermore, it highlights the benefits of the plant, be they nutritional, medicinal, or ecological, enabling users to learn about its possible uses. A comprehensive grasp of the plant’s evolutionary history and geographic range is provided by the device’s scientific classifications, which include genus, family, and botanical context.
Online Marketing
Creative agency
Web development
PLEDGE
Impact on the market
The current market for our digital camera is really promising, there has been growing interest withing plant care, and agriculture thought the years. Our device is designed for specialised audience, which consists of gardeners, tourists, farmers, researchers, and educators who require accurate information about plants.
The current market of our device (smart agriculture market) is constantly growing and evolving and being fuelled by constant innovation in Ai. With the rise of attraction in tourists and urban gardening there has been a major demand for accurate plant recognition tools. This provides a gap in the market for our digital camera to fill allowing those who have interests in plants to receive accurate and reliable information.
Within the smart agriculture market our digital camera may face many issues including technological challenges. By ensuring our device provides accurate information is key this is because there being misidentifications will cause users trusts to fall. To stay competitive EcoVerse requires consistent updates and to expand our database to help ensure reliability and long-term user engagement.
RESULTS
FINAL PRODUCT
**THIS IS NOT THE FULL PROCESS, MUST BE REVIEWED + IMAGES OF FINAL PRODUCTS WILL ALSO BE AMENDED**
We began the process by researching what components would be needed to build our smart plant identification camera. This involved looking into the technical requirements for real-time image processing, touchscreen interaction, and portability. Once we finalized our list of essential parts, we sourced most of the equipment from Bruno’s lab at the university.
From the lab, we reserved a Raspberry Pi 3 touchscreen and then collected a Raspberry Pi 4, the touchscreen display, and the official Raspberry Pi camera module. After gathering all the components, we began assembling the hardware. This included connecting the camera module securely to the Raspberry Pi using the ribbon cable, and attaching the touchscreen, which would act as the main user interface.
To house the device and ensure it was portable and protected, we also designed and 3D printed a custom case. This helped keep all components in place and made the device easier to handle in outdoor environments.
