Protecting fruit orchards from dangerous pests has been the focus as of late for researchers at the University of Trento. The team is relying on the Raspberry Pi to implement a custom machine learning (ML) platform capable of detecting dangerous pests for farmers before the infestation escalates to dangerous levels.
To tackle the issue, they developed solar-powered, pheromone-based smart traps to lure bugs inside. The Raspberry Pi then captures an image for evaluation to determine whether or not too many unwanted bugs are present. In this case, the team has trained their system to detect Codling Moths with a custom model but it would be possible to train the platform to look for other bugs using another model.
According to the paper published by the University of Trento research team, a Raspberry Pi 4 was considered for its notably higher processing power. However, the team ultimately chose to use an undisclosed Raspberry Pi 3 model as it operates with lower average power consumption.
