↓ Ears in the Jungle
Motion sensor cameras have become a common tool in wildlife monitoring , allowing conservationists to catch a glimpse of animal species in their natural habitats . But cameras are often limited by their line of sight , and even the best camera can have problems capturing small , fast-moving critters such as birds . Yet another student team from Engineers for Exploration is taking a new approach , developing an acoustic species identification system that will allow scientists to monitor the numbers and types of animals in a much larger geographic range by simply placing an audio recorder in their habitat . Acoustic data from the microphone is then run through the students ’ machine learning and artificial intelligence platform , which will detect the number and frequency of different species ’ calls . This information can help determine the health of bird and animal populations in remote locations .
But creating an audio classification system that can differentiate between species ’ sounds is a challenge . The students are training their system on four terabytes of acoustic data — roughly 1,500 hours of audio — gathered in the Peruvian Amazon by their San Diego Zoo collaborators .
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↗ Pachyderms on the Move
A key measure of elephants ’ health is their activity and movement levels , in part because movement keeps their feet healthy , preventing infection and disease . A team of engineering students working in The Basement innovation center at UC San Diego are partnering with San Diego Zoo scientists to develop a way to monitor and track the movement of these endangered species in their zoo habitats . Using existing cameras in the elephants ’ abodes , the students are using computer vision to generate heat maps that show where these endangered
“ It shows where the elephants are hanging out , and if there are spots in the enclosure they don ’ t use as much , the zookeepers could encourage exploration and movement to more of their surroundings .”
— Seth Litman , engineering student
species are spending time , with brighter colors meaning a longer duration of time spent in one area . “ It shows where the elephants are hanging out , and if there are spots in the enclosure they don ’ t use as much , the zookeepers could encourage exploration and movement to more of their surroundings ,” says Seth Litman , an electrical engineering student . Using this model , they hope to provide the zoo team with a quantitative figure capturing the extent of elephant herd movement each day . Future plans for this project , called “ Zoober ,” include adding the ability to track each elephant ’ s movements individually , but distinguishing the elephants from one another in their object detection algorithm is a tricky challenge they ’ re still working to solve .
Learn more at : tritonmag . com / trackers
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