# Detecting Invasive Insects with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated UAV-based system employing UV lighting and computer vision to detect invasive insects, significantly improving detection speed and accuracy over traditional manual methods, thereby enhancing understanding of insect migration.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel UAV system integrating UV lighting and lightweight vision algorithms for automated insect detection, surpassing existing manual techniques in efficiency and precision.

## Key findings

- High detection precision and recall in field conditions
- Faster and more accurate than manual search methods
- Enables comprehensive study of insect migration patterns

## Abstract

A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture is to obtain knowledge about the migration patterns of these species. Current state-of-the-art methods of studying these migration patterns involve a mark-release-recapture technique, in which insects are released after being marked and researchers attempt to recapture them later. However, this approach involves a human researcher manually searching for these insects in large fields and results in very low recapture rates. In this paper, we propose an automated system for detecting released insects using an unmanned aerial vehicle. This system utilizes ultraviolet lighting technology, digital cameras, and lightweight computer vision algorithms to more quickly and accurately detect insects compared to the current state of the art. The efficiency and accuracy that this system provides will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of invasive insect species migration patterns. Our experimental results demonstrate that our system can detect real target insects in field conditions with high precision and recall rates.