World's 1st AI-Based Camera Helps Fight Wildlife Animal Hunters

It is bad enough that we human beings are destroying the habitats of animals with deforestation and pollution. We are making it worse by hunting and killing many endangered species such as elephants, tigers, and rhinos, which affects the balance in the Earth's ecosystem.

It is estimated that approximately 35,000 African elephants are killed each year, which means an elephant is killed every 15 minutes. If we do not come up with proper measures, in no more than a decade, these elephants will be completely wiped out.

Some organizations have been working to put a stop to this issue, and they are receiving assistance from Big Tech.

Three wildlife protection groups including the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Nat Geo Society and RESOLVE, have teamed up with Intel to create a more effective tool to stop poachers. They're setting up AI-based cameras around national parks.

This AI-based camera is supplied by TrailGuard, using the Movidius Myriad 2 VPU processor from Intel. It is able to detect wildlife hunters faster and send notice to rangers promptly. This helps these employees reach the poachers quicker and stop them before they harm the wild animals.

To do this, cameras utilize the Movidius Vision Processing Units to capture images that process neural networks. Any vehicle or person that appears in the camera's vision, it will immediately send an alert to the rangers. After that, they can identify whether another guard or poachers that activated the cameras to take action.

Intel claims that its technology is capable of distinguishing people and vehicles from wildlife more accurately so the alert will not be activated when animals enter the camera's vision. The previous version of the RESOLVE camera would capture everything moving objects and send the photos to on-duty rangers. They have to spend a lot of time manually checking. AI provides more time and labor-saving method.

Moreover, the TrailGuard AI cameras use very low power, with just one charge, it can be operated for one and a half years. This will limit the number of camera maintenance times that might reveal the locations of the camera to poachers.

Commenting on this technology, National Geographic Labs' vice president, Dr. Fabien Laurier said: