Digital Automated Identification SYstem (DAISY)
Encyclopedia
Digital Automated Identification SYstem (DAISY) is an automated species identification
system optimised for the rapid screening of invertebrates (e.g. insects) by non-experts (e.g. parataxonomists
).
It was developed by Dr. Mark O'Neill
during the early 1990s. Development was supported by funding from the Darwin Initiative
in 1997 and BBSRC. The intellectual property rights were acquired by O'Neill's company; Tumbling Dice Ltd, in February 2000 at the end of the grant funded Darwin Project. The systems is currently undergoing further development
with a view to producing an exemplar which is web accessible and which can cope in near real time with groups (e.g. hawk moths) which contain several hundred taxa. On medium to high end PC
server hardware (e.g. a blade server
) an identification is possible in under 2 seconds for a 300 taxon group. Parallelisation of the critical DAISY classifier codes (using either bespoke FPGA technology or general purpose GPU programming technology such as CUDA
) will give an order of magnitude increase in performance. This means that DAISY can be deployed to make real time identifications within groups containing thousands of taxa (e.g. true flies).
DAISY has been used in several research projects by O'Neill and others, and featured in popular science TV and magazine articles. The project has also been the subject of a recent article in Science
.
Recently, the first DAISY installation capable of scaling to hundreds of taxa has been installed at Natural History Musueum
in London. This server will offer both VNC and Web Service
based interfaces and is able to offload compute intensive pattern matching operations onto an NVIDIA
GPU programmed using CUDA
. This installation is capable of providing identification to species in a 300 taxon dataset in less than 5 seconds in a multiple user environment.
Automated species identification
Automated species identification is a method of making the expertise of taxonomists available to ecologists, parataxonomists and others via computers, PDA's and other digital technology.- Introduction :...
system optimised for the rapid screening of invertebrates (e.g. insects) by non-experts (e.g. parataxonomists
Parataxonomy
Parataxonomy is the use of less qualified assistance to, or replacement of, taxonomists in the practice and science of classification.Parataxonomy may be used to improve taxonomic efficiency by enabling more expert taxonomists to restrict their activity to the tasks that require their specialist...
).
It was developed by Dr. Mark O'Neill
Mark A. O'Neill
Mark A. O'Neill is an English biologist and computer scientist with interests in artificial intelligence, systems biology, complex systems and image analysis...
during the early 1990s. Development was supported by funding from the Darwin Initiative
Darwin Initiative
The Darwin Initiative is a UK Government funding program that aims to assist countries with rich biodiversity but poor financial resources to meet their objectives under the Convention on Biological Diversity ; the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ;...
in 1997 and BBSRC. The intellectual property rights were acquired by O'Neill's company; Tumbling Dice Ltd, in February 2000 at the end of the grant funded Darwin Project. The systems is currently undergoing further development
with a view to producing an exemplar which is web accessible and which can cope in near real time with groups (e.g. hawk moths) which contain several hundred taxa. On medium to high end PC
server hardware (e.g. a blade server
Blade server
A blade server is a stripped down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Whereas a standard rack-mount server can function with a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power...
) an identification is possible in under 2 seconds for a 300 taxon group. Parallelisation of the critical DAISY classifier codes (using either bespoke FPGA technology or general purpose GPU programming technology such as CUDA
CUDA
CUDA or Compute Unified Device Architecture is a parallel computing architecture developed by Nvidia. CUDA is the computing engine in Nvidia graphics processing units that is accessible to software developers through variants of industry standard programming languages...
) will give an order of magnitude increase in performance. This means that DAISY can be deployed to make real time identifications within groups containing thousands of taxa (e.g. true flies).
DAISY has been used in several research projects by O'Neill and others, and featured in popular science TV and magazine articles. The project has also been the subject of a recent article in Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
.
Recently, the first DAISY installation capable of scaling to hundreds of taxa has been installed at Natural History Musueum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...
in London. This server will offer both VNC and Web Service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
based interfaces and is able to offload compute intensive pattern matching operations onto an NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GPU programmed using CUDA
CUDA
CUDA or Compute Unified Device Architecture is a parallel computing architecture developed by Nvidia. CUDA is the computing engine in Nvidia graphics processing units that is accessible to software developers through variants of industry standard programming languages...
. This installation is capable of providing identification to species in a 300 taxon dataset in less than 5 seconds in a multiple user environment.