Rentokil takes on the world’s rat problem with facial recognition

Rodent infestation is a problem that almost every large city in the world has to deal with. Conventionally, this problem has been addressed by mousetraps and rat poison. Now, Rentokil says that it has found a more effective way to deal with the issue by using facial recognition:
“Rentokil said its surveillance service, which live streams video of the vermin to its “central command centre” for real-time analysis using artificial intelligence, can help decide where and how to hunt the fast-breeding undesirables.
The UK-based group acquired the technology in a spree of hundreds of deals that has boosted its pest control capabilities.
Andy Ransom, chief executive, said the purchase in December of Israeli market leader Eitan Amichai had brought Rentokil “significant technology”, boosting a system being piloted by customers from food producers to offices.
“With facial recognition technology you can see that rat number one behaved differently from rat number three,” Ransom told the Financial Times.
“And the technology will always identify which rat has come back, where are they feeding, where are they sleeping, who’s causing the damage, which part of the building are they coming from, where are they getting into the building from, whether it’s the same rodent that caused the problem last week.””
The FT article contains a brilliant photo of how Rentokil’s tech does facial recognition for rats and identifies the really naughty rats who are causing most of the damage.

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