Technology: Artificial intelligence from Lausanne detects plastic waste in the sea

New artificial intelligence (AI) from Lausanne detects the presence of plastic in the sea through satellite images. This could help systematically cleanse the oceans of plastic waste using ships, EPFL announced on Thursday.

The artificial intelligence model, developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), estimates the probability of waste for each pixel in satellite images, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Wageningen University (NL) explained.

The accumulation of litter at sea can be seen in Sentinel-2 satellite images freely available to the European Space Agency, but because that involves terabytes of data, this data must be automatically analyzed using artificial intelligence models.

The new AI is more successful than previous models, according to EPFL. This is true even in difficult weather conditions with clouds and fog, according to the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. This is especially important because plastics are often washed out in open water after rain. The researchers presented the artificial intelligence to experts in the journal Cell iScience.

SIL, DAP