AI-Enhanced Medicinal Plant Identification System with Multilingual Social Media Integration

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a country with a Ayurvedic culture which cannot be experienced anywhere in the world. This cultural system is based on a series of knowledge passed on from generations over 3000 years that could treat a variety of diseases. This traditional ayurvedic system consist of a vast herbal plant collection. Most of the information about this ayurvedic system is written in manuscripts for thousands of years. Sri Lanka lacks a proper system which is specific to ayurvedic sector is a major concern that should be addressed at present. Absence of a system has lead to problems and difficulties in identification and classification of herbal plants, to transfer knowledge about herbal plants and to conserve these ayurvedic plants for the future generation. Another concern is that Ayurvedic undergraduate students face many difficulties when gathering knowledge of these herbal plants and medicinal practices. Sri Lanka does not comprise with a full ayurvedic plant inventory system is another major concern that identified in the country. By considering all the problems an intelligent system has been recognized as a solution. The system will be based on Deep Learning, CNN, GIS, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based principals to cater all the identified problems. The system will be able to identify ayurvedic plant with an image of a leave, flower, or fruit as input. And also, system will be able to classify and provide a detailed description about the identified plant including medicinal value and the distribution of the plant in the island. System will provide a crowdsourcing social media facility with both English and Sinhala languages to share information with fellow herbalist in the country.