My vision is a drone, the kind that fly a survey pattern. Modern ones have a 61 megapixel camera and LIDAR which is a few millimeter resolution, they are for mapping before a road is built as an example.
We know where there are large herds, for example wild horses. My larger concern is invasive species, such as hogs. The AI can find and count the animals inside of a large area, using cameras and existing sensors. From there we can take the next action, which is giving contraceptives to the breeding females and slowly reducing numbers. Or fast, if you know where they are. I spoke with Oracle AI and they said that would be easy. Then they asked if I had any funding lol.
14 April 2024 6:33pm
Hi Johnathan!
Here are a few examples where UAVs and AI has been used to spot animals.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.13904
Quantifying the movement, behaviour and environmental context of group‐living animals using drones and computer vision
<em>Journal of Animal Ecology</em> publishes animal ecology research that advances ecological theory, generates ecological insights, or addresses broad ecological principles.
besjournalsA google scholar search as this will find many more:
One thing often forgotten when considering UAVs for aerial surveys like these are that maximum height above ground is normally about 100-120m. This really limits the area one can cover.
Cheers,
Lars
21 April 2024 4:56pm
That was one of the things I was wondering about, the height that it can resolve animals at. At some resolution it must be able to tell different animals apart.
My application is for invasive herds, or uncontrolled large animal herds such as wild horses or urban deer. In phase 2 we apply contraceptives to them to humanely reduce numbers.
3 May 2024 3:24pm
Our research group has worked on this issue. Here is the paper link:
(PDF) Deer survey from drone thermal imagery using enhanced faster R-CNN based on ResNets and FPN
PDF | On Nov 1, 2023, Haitao Lyu and others published Deer survey from drone thermal imagery using enhanced faster R-CNN based on ResNets and FPN | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
ResearchGate
17 May 2024 12:22pm
Awesome! I am looking at something similar too - also awaiting funding. It's in SE Australia, also focusing on invasive species (red fox), protecting an area that has nesting & migratory shorebirds.
I was looking at infrared images, which will present a new challenge for AI/ML coding as there isn't much by way of training images to work with.
I think a lot depends on whether you are hoping to do the image recognition in real-time (during flight) or after downloading the images.
Also flying transects seems better supported for statistical modelling than camera trap images.
Very interested to hear how it goes.
Lars Holst Hansen
Aarhus University