Peter Kohler & Stefan Leutenegger: "The Plastic Tide: Vision from the Skies" | Talks at Google

Talks at Google.

Peter Kohler, founder of The Plastic Tide project, and Dr. Stefan Leutenegger, Lecturer in Robotics at Imperial College London, discuss how the ocean is under siege from an ever-increasing tide of waste, and how technology like machine learning and drones can help us fix the issue.

Threatening not only a vital economic resource worth an estimated $5 trillion a year but also humanity’s very own life support. The Plastic Tide initiative was started almost two years ago, with the aim of quantifying the problem using drone imagery of UK beaches and beyond: raised awareness and precise data will hopefully drive solutions at societal, political, and technological levels.

They have collected a huge database of drone imagery around UK beaches last year, and a prototype algorithm developed already combines a deep-learning-based plastic detection scheme in the images with geo-referenced mapping. The speakers will show early results and present related research in the space of localization, mapping, and drone flight; and furthermore, sketch the way forward to limit the plastic tide swamping our oceans.

Learn more here.