HORN Free! Roaming Rhinos Could Be Guarded by AI Drones

Call it the ultimate example of a job that’s sometimes best done remotely. Wildlife researchers say rhinos are magnificent beasts, but they like to be left alone, especially when they’re with their young.

In the latest example of how researchers are using the latest technologies to track animals less invasively, a team of researchers has proposed harnessing high-flying AI-equipped drones to track the endangered black rhino through the wilds of Namibia.

In a paper published earlier this year in the journal PeerJ, the researchers show the potential of drone-based AI to identify animals in even the remotest areas and provide real-time updates on their status from the air.

While drones — and technology of just about every kind — have been harnessed to track African wildlife, the proposal promises to help gamekeepers move faster to protect rhinos and other megafauna from poachers.

AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz spoke to two of the authors of the paper.

Zoey Jewell is co-founder and president of wild track.org, a global network of biologists and conservationists dedicated to non-invasive wildlife monitoring techniques. And Alice Hua is a recent graduate of the School of Information at UC Berkeley in California, and an ML platform engineer at CrowdStrike.

And for more, read the full paper at https://peerj.com/articles/13779/.

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