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Botlink and Easy Business Automation Collaborate to Launch Revolutionary Monarch Conservation Software Platform, POLLi
In a collaborative effort, Botlink and Easy Business Automation (SBA) introduce the POLLi software platform, a groundbreaking solution designed to streamline data collection for conservation organizations. The platform leverages the facility of drones, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing to boost the efficiency and scalability of monarch habitat monitoring across North America.
Developed in close collaboration with the Monarch Joint Enterprise (MJV), a national partnership network dedicated to protecting monarchs and other pollinators, POLLi addresses the challenges posed by labor-intensive manual field counts. The platform’s revolutionary features include automated drone operations for image collection, machine-learning cloud computing for object detection, and a complicated online software interface for image evaluation and reporting.
Botlink, founded in Fargo, N.D. by military pilots and engineers, is a key contributor to the event of the POLLi software platform. Matt Sather, the overall manager of Botlink, said “The team’s experience in developing drone flight software, robust cloud APIs for image processing, and frontend user interfaces for analyzing data, got here together right into a single product. A number of long hours went into POLLi, and I believe it’s something the whole team needs to be incredibly happy with.”
POLLi’s Flight application underwent rigorous testing throughout the summer of 2023, amassing lots of of flight hours and capturing 1000’s of photos. The AI models employed by POLLi identified tens of 1000’s of individual milkweed plants across the Upper Midwest, showcasing the platform’s potential impact on conservation efforts.
Easy Business Automation (SBA), founded in Waverly, M.N., is one other key collaborator in the event of POLLi. Greg Emerick, CEO of Easy Business Automation, highlighted the platform’s capability to catalyze positive change, stating, “POLLi captures and processes exponentially greater amounts of milkweed data than the manual efforts performed today, embodying my belief that after we harness innovation for the greater good, we are able to protect and preserve the natural world for future generations.”
The guts of the POLLi platform lies in its algorithms, particularly its object detection capabilities that may accurately discover common milkweed across large areas. This key differentiator contributes to unprecedented efficiencies in data collection and evaluation for conservation purposes.
Monarch Joint Enterprise (MJV), a coordinating force behind national monarch and pollinator conservation goals since 2009, played a vital role in guiding the event of POLLi. Wendy Caldwell, executive director of Monarch Joint Enterprise, emphasized the broader impact of POLLi beyond monarch butterflies, stating, “When seamlessly integrated into conservation research, it equips us with advanced tools to exactly assess habitat quality and distribution, enabling more strategic resource allocation for the protection of a various range of plants and animals.”
POLLi’s ongoing development includes the incorporation of recent machine learning algorithms that may enable it to discover additional plant species and other objects captured through drone photography within the near future.
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