Artificial intelligence gives a voice to one of Earth’s most vital populations. And we’re not talking about people.
ePlant technology provides homeowners with scientifically-backed conversational insights to improve the health and longevity of trees, delivered right to user smartphones. In other words, the data is drawn from an expansive algorithm of tree history, species habits, climate change, real-time weather conditions and more, but the information is relayed to the humans in this symbiotic relationship in “human” terms.
“Sometimes we end up having to pay someone to remove them. When we do that, we’ve wasted the resources we spent to help them grow, we lose the value they brought to us, and we lose time in the years and years it takes to grow another tree,” Hine said. “The sensors allowed us to see how trees respond to water in ways we never had before, which was invaluable to our research objectives. The data output from the sensors are intuitive and easy to understand, making them a fun way for students to get involved in our research,” says Natalie Love, PhD, a Frost Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
“Products out there before have been lab-experiment kinds of sensors. They’re awesome. They’re super techy, wired to a power source. And they’re expensive. TreeTag takes just a few minutes to install. It’s solar-powered and rechargeable,” he said.