Patangasuchaka

An Artificial Intelligence Based Butterfly and Moth Identification

India is blessed with rich flora and fauna. Among all, the birds and butterflies captures the attention of most of us for being able to fly and showcase striking colours and patterns. India has about 1677 (Paul Van Gasse, 2013. Butterflies of India Annotated Checklist) species of butterflies. Though many butterflies are not sighted and captured that often, rest are largely sighted and well recorded. With due development of Information Technology and affordable image capturing devices, the record of these butterfly sighting has grown than ever before. However, the hurdles for identification remains unchanged. The countable number of experts spend a lot of time identifying these common butterflies and find less time to do what they were supposed to do i.e., Taxonomy. On the other hand, it is very important to identify every butterfly species captured either for sheer enthusiasm or for ecological studies. We as a team at the School of Ecology and Conservation tried to break this never- ending loop of identification of butterflies and getting these field samples identified with the help of Artificial Intelligence. A complex set of algorithms trains itself on the sample set of field images and learns to identify a new image of the butterfly in a matter of few seconds with great accuracy without a need to leave your chair. Pathangasuchaka can now identify 800 most common butterflies and moths (the list is available in the species section) of India and we are trying our best to include all the butterflies of India in days to come.