Use robots to find birds

Bird researchers have been searching for ivory woodpecker, a species of bird believed to be extinct at the wildlife sanctuary in the state of Arkansas, USA. Previously, it was thought that this bird was extinct but in 2004, some people said they saw it.

So scientists resumed their search with a new, inventive robot. This robot uses 2 cameras to store images of the sky consecutively, where it is thought to capture the life of the bird with the most sophisticated software.

This system is installed here for 3 months and it only records a related image in every 10,000 images it collects.

Intelligent robot system to observe the sky. (Image: BBC) However, there is no picture of the rare and sought-after black-and-white woodpecker, but according to Dr. Ken Goldberg of the University of California, Berkeley who invented the system said They have very unique images of some birds.

Dr. Ken Goldberg said that the emergence of humankind can affect the living habits of animals, but robots can help us observe all species.

This woodpecker is often found in the Southeastern United States and Cuba, but deforestation has caused their environment to be ruined. The last seen woodpecker was in 1944. Since then, decades of searching have passed but still no visible traces of them and hopes can be found to dissipate.

The ability to see this bird in the reserve in 2004 has made bird researchers eager to return and many researchers with modern search systems pour into the national reserve of the cave. wild animals in Arkansas every year.

But biological research is not simple, because you have to go to remote, desolate places, even cold, it can be a dangerous area, and of course the appearance of humans will stir up to birds, so the idea of ​​robots came out .

Everything is ready, waiting for the woodpecker

The device is installed at the conservation area, two high-resolution cameras connected to a hard drive and all with snow. A digital camera faces up to the sky, continuously capturing images with a 2 megapixel resolution.

Dr. Goldberg said they installed robots in a statistic of sky images and looked for unusual pixels outside. Next they look for groups of images with certain sizes outside and ultimately those moving at a certain speed.

Woodpeckers are being searched by robots.(Photo: BBC)

Images stored on the hard drive will be deleted periodically if they are not useful. However, sometimes things like falling leaves or helicopters flying over can interfere with the system.

But the image of the falcon, the goose, or the recorded birds, proving that waiting for time we can capture the image of the rare woodpecker that humans are looking for.

However, there are limitations such as this system can only survey a specific place. It can only scan the sky image because the algorithms programmed in the system cannot scan deep into the forest and filter out the image of bird movement from the slight sway of the tree.

But Dr. Goldberg believes that, along with other modern research equipment, we will eventually capture an image of an ivory black-and-white woodpecker, just a matter of time.

During this time he believed that the device he invented could be used to search for other wild animals or evade humans such as bears, gorillas or for security applications such as monitors. Check baggage at the airport.

GIA PHAN