SmartCS: Enabling the Creation of ML-Powered Computer Vision Mobile Apps for Citizen Science Applications without Coding

TL;DR

SmartCS is a platform that enables rapid, code-free creation of citizen science mobile apps with client-side machine learning support, allowing offline use and improved data collection by non-experts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel platform that simplifies the development of ML-powered citizen science apps without coding, supporting offline functionality and broadening participation.

Findings

Apps created with SmartCS are usable offline, ensuring data collection in remote areas.

High school students successfully developed citizen science apps using the platform.

SmartCS reduces development time and costs for ML-supported citizen science applications.

Abstract

It is undeniable that citizen science contributes to the advancement of various fields of study. There are now software tools that facilitate the development of citizen science apps. However, apps developed with these tools rely on individual human skills to correctly collect useful data. Machine learning (ML)-aided apps provide on-field guidance to citizen scientists on data collection tasks. However, these apps rely on server-side ML support, and therefore need a reliable internet connection. Furthermore, the development of citizen science apps with ML support requires a significant investment of time and money. For some projects, this barrier may preclude the use of citizen science effectively. We present a platform that democratizes citizen science by making it accessible to a much broader audience of both researchers and participants. The SmartCS platform allows one to create citizen science apps with ML support quickly and without coding skills. Apps developed using SmartCS have client-side ML support, making them usable in the field, even when there is no internet connection. The client-side ML helps educate users to better recognize the subjects, thereby enabling high-quality data collection. We present several citizen science apps created using SmartCS, some of which were conceived and created by high school students.