WeedRemeed
Effective weed detection at scale using
colour-picking and AI/ML
Australia’s first drone image weed detection solution on the AWS cloud
Solving the ‘big data’ challenge

The WeedRemeed Portal has been developed over 3 years as a regional partnership between Snowy Monaro Regional Council, Local Land Services and 2pi Software.
Cloud-hosted in Australia, WeedRemeed uniquely facilitates secure sharing of large drone footage datasets to meet the inordinately high data needs of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) for weed detection.
The WeedRemeed future roadmap includes a robust security and governance model, and links to third-party services to put real-world machine learning capabilities in the hands of biosecurity professionals, Landcare groups & farmers to remediate priority national weeds and boost farm yields.
The innate scalability and adaptability of the system allows significant ease of set-up and adoption by multiple councils within the near region, and nationally.
Developed through a regional partnership with
How it works





Step 1
Fly and capture
Using a connected drone, the operator scans the appropriate area capturing aerial coverage of the field
Step 2
Make a picking swatch
An intermediate operator then uses a colour picker tool to isolate the colour associated with the target weeds in a sample image
Step 3
Process at scale
The chosen colour is then processed using A.I. and M.L. in the cloud to identify the target weeds among the entire image set taken from the drone operator
Step 4
GeoReference all weeds
The system then identifies all target species among the entire image data set
Step 5
Follow the map – find all weeds easily
With the geo-targeted information provided by WeedRemeed, council operators can then begin the remediation process
Read how we helped the Snowy Monaro Council identify and target African Lovegrass for remediation
Read the case studyThe process in depth
Capture
Drone operator(s) in the field use one or multiple drones to capture an assessment area. Assessment areas can be:
- large blocks of land (council and BioSecurity applications)
- farms (agricultural applications)
- parks (land management and BioDiversity research applications)
Bulk data uploads
Resulting images are then uploaded into the WeedRemeed portal. This process can be initiated in the field for on-the-fly processing.
Upload view
In the upload view, the WeedRemeed portal offers the following features:
- Secure user access/logins
- The ability to set naming conventions for batch uploads
- The ability to capture meta data from imported images
Specialist Data Handling
With the image and data imported, WeedRemeed can then execute the following processes:
- Swatch creation (multiple)
- EXIF extraction
- GeoReferencing data generation
- Data sampling
- Comparisons
The WeedRemeed system allows expert data analysts to fine-tune controls for data to ensure the highest quality data is being analysed and processed.
Common Data Pre-Processing Ops (Mix n Match)
WeedRemeed provides users with the following pre-processing tools:
- Splice
- Segmentation
- Greyscaling
- Other operations coming
AI/ML Inference
Using cloud-based AI/ML tools, all of this data is then processed at scale. Data can be used to feed training algorithms that can then be used for future data sets. Reports and other visualisation tools can be generated from all of the resulting data processing.
Real world examples
Colour picking for Serrated Tussock swatch finessing by non-data scientists

Raw drone image (before picking)

User-selected colour picked

Post processing – species identified
Briar Red Berries invasive species detection

Raw drone image (before picking)

User-selected colour picked

Post processing – species identified
Mouse eared hawkweed invasive species detection

Raw drone image of target species

User-selected colour picked

Post processing – species identified
Scotch broom invasive species detection

Raw drone image (before picking)

User-selected colour picked

Post processing – species identified
Gorse invasive species detection

Raw drone image

User-selected colour picked

Post processing – species identified
Interested in deploying WeedRemeed in your area?
Future roadmap
User Sign-Up
- Registration
- Training/tutorials
- Support
Governance
- Explicit sharing/non-sharing
- Ownership protection
- Security
- Terms and conditions
Pricing & Payments
- Usage logging
- Payment gateway integration
- AWS Marketplace integration