Early warning system for environmental adjustments: New animal tags with cameras and AI full maiden flight

How can a vulture in a Berlin Zoo assist its conspecifics and their habitats in Namibia? Perhaps it could actually function a mannequin and patron for a brand new technology of animal tags.

The prototype of an progressive animal tag system developed by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (Fraunhofer IIS) accomplished its maiden flight on a vulture at Tierpark Berlin at the moment. The tags will probably be outfitted with sensor-based synthetic intelligence (AI), a digital camera, energy-efficient electronics and satellite-based communication expertise. This will enable for solely new insights into the world of animals and their habitats. The tags detect and transmit animal habits in actual time and are thus an early warning system for ecological adjustments.

Climate change, species extinction, pandemics—owing to human affect, our planet is altering sooner than we will perceive and shield it. To sustain with the accelerating tempo of environmental change, environmental research and conservation should break new floor and embrace the potential of the newest technological developments. Leibniz-IZW and Fraunhofer IIS have subsequently been working collectively for the reason that starting of 2022 in two main analysis and growth initiatives. In the GAIA-Sat-IoT (Guardian of the wild utilizing Artifical Intelligence Applications and Satellite-based IoT Networks) and SyNaKI (Synergy of pure and synthetic intelligence within the swarm) initiatives, they’ve developed a brand new technology of animal tag that permits considerably sooner and extra correct insights into ecosystems.

To this finish, the tags will sport important improvements: Firstly, they’re divided into two elements, one among which is connected to the vultures‘ backs and information place and acceleration information, amongst others. The second module incorporates a digital camera and subsequently sits on the birds’ chests on the entrance. Both elements are related and work hand in hand. This is made potential by a second innovation: on-board AI immediately on the tag acknowledges sure behavioral patterns of the animals within the information, classifies their habits and thereby generates priceless data immediately on the tag. The digital camera then takes photographs at essential moments, which in flip are evaluated by one other AI system. Last however not least, a brand new satellite-based communication hyperlink will make sure that data might be transmitted immediately from the tag to a satellite and to the scientists even in essentially the most distant ecosystems.

“We are following this route because it allows us to see much more precisely and quickly what is going on in an ecosystem,” says Dr. Jörg Melzheimer, GAIA challenge head at Leibniz-IZW. “We are developing our tags exemplarily for use on vultures in southern Africa. These scavengers have amazing sensory abilities and intelligence, each bird on its own and together in a wake. They find carrion with tremendous precision and speed, making them ideal allies for us.”

On the one hand, the incidence of carrion is a very pure circumstance, but important adjustments within the ecosystem will also be detected from irregularities within the carrion incidence, for instance the outbreak of wildlife illnesses. The tags make it potential to detect such native ecological hotspots nearly in actual time. “We designed the GAIA projects as a network of animal, human and artificial intelligence. We use high-tech and the evolutionary intelligence of animals to identify and solve pressing environmental problems,” says Melzheimer.

The design and growth of the GAIA animal tag system is being carried out in shut cooperation between specialists in wildlife biology and ecology, synthetic intelligence, communication expertise and sensor expertise at Leibniz-IZW and Fraunhofer IIS. “The processing of the data by an AI directly on the tag is a key feature, as it can be used to decide in real time which of the collected data are relevant enough to send to the satellite,” says Dipl.-Inf. Nina Holzer, Group Leader Multimodal Human Sensing and challenge head of GAIA-Sat-IoT at Fraunhofer IIS. “Sending all the collected data in real time is virtually impossible, a satellite connection doesn’t allow for that and would consume too much power.”

In addition, the break up tag design is a novelty with its very personal technical necessities, experiences Dipl.-Ing. Jürgen Ernst, Chief Engineer at Fraunhofer IIS and lead engineer of GAIA-Sat-IoT. “The camera module sits on the front of the vulture’s chest. All other sensors as well as the AI processors and the solar power supply are housed in the tag on the back. Both electronic components have to work together smoothly and the whole systems also needs be perfectly adapted to the anatomy of the animals so that it can be brought into use in accordance with animal welfare aspects.”

The Tierpark Berlin—one among two zoos within the German capital—is an indispensable cooperation associate of the consortium. In an early phase of the challenge, GAIA scientists and zoo keepers tagged two white-backed vultures within the Tierpark’s aviary with commercially out there tags, which report acceleration information (ACC) and GPS positions. ACC information present a really exact perception into the actions of the tags and the animals. At the identical time, the scientists recorded footage of typical vulture habits with a video camera. The mixture of ACC information and video recordings made it potential to coach the substitute intelligence.

“In the videos we can identify exactly to the second when the bird shows which typical behavior and can thus identify corresponding patterns in the ACC data,” explains Wanja Rast, AI specialist at Leibniz-IZW. “This training data is the basis of the AI, which in the future will perform automated behavior classification directly on the tag in a very energy-efficient and accurate way.” The AI just isn’t but carried out on the present prototype and is at the moment nonetheless being developed desktop-based with downloaded information, however it would change into a novel promoting level of the brand new animal tags over the course of the initiatives.

“In the SyNaKI project, we will also map natural swarm intelligence virtually in a swarm of microprocessors,” provides SyNaKI challenge head Felix Kreyß from Fraunhofer IIS. “By doing so, we enable distributed and AI-based data analysis directly in the field, in a wake of vultures. To achieve this, we combine natural with artificial intelligence on the animal tags as well as with approaches from extreme edge computing.”

Another main problem within the growth of the tags is the environment friendly and dependable transmission of knowledge from the animal to the consumer, for instance the scientists or conservationists.

“Since the tag is to be used early in the project to collect training data, the transmission function is currently (still) limited. In the next step, we will develop the transmitter further and integrate the AI signal processing electronics,” says Florian Leschka, Group Leader System Design at Fraunhofer IIS. “Another essential work step is the integration of a powerful satellite IoT radio module into the transmitter to guarantee the subsequent transmission of the extracted information.”

Especially in areas past the attain of terrestrial communication infrastructures, the help of satellite-based networks is required. To allow direct transmission from the transmitter node to the satellite, the Fraunhofer specialists are growing a communication system based mostly on a terrestrial mioty expertise. As a results of the developments by Leibniz-IZW and Fraunhofer IIS, a small animal tag is being created which intelligently pre-processes and combines information and sends solely related environmental data by way of a satellite-based communication hyperlink.

Provided by
Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW)