Astro-Ecology

Can you tell similar looking species apart?
One day we hope to, but at the moment our algorithm hasn't been trained to do this. As we gather more data and get more classifications through the Zooniverse we think we eventually will. (The astro half of the team can't even tell the difference between different types of antelope when they watch Planet Earth, so we really need help!)

Do drones disturb the animals?
Mainly no, but it depends on the animal. Most wild animals we have flown the drones over only react the first time they see or hear the drone, after that they know its not a threat. The kind of reactions we see don't tend to be extreme, sometimes monkeys will move to lower branches of a tree briefly before comping back up, elephants clump together until they figure out where the noise is coming from then they carry on like nothing has happened. Some wild animals aren't bothered at all. We've found primates are often very curious after the first flight, and some will climb to the tops of the trees to watch the drone go past.

How expensive are the drones?
Because we build all our own drones, they are much cheaper than those you can buy off the shelf. Our drones cost around £1 to £2k (GBP) depending on their size, the equivalent off the shelf drones cost around £2.5 and £5k.

How long does a drone fly?
Depends on the drone. We use both multi-rotor (quad-copter style) drones and fixed-wing (airplane) style drones. A large multi-rotor drone can usually fly for 15-20 minutes, which isn't really long enough to survey a large area. A fixed-wing drone can usually fly for around an hour. An hour still isn't ideal but it allows us to cover a very large area. In future we hope to use larger drones solar panels on the wings which can fly for a long time.

Can the poachers shoot down the drone?
It would be very hard. Our drones are around 50cm to 1 meter across, making them much bigger than those you might buy in a shop. However when they are flying at 100 meters above the ground they look very small, so you would have to be a very good shot to take one down!

What else can this be used for?
There are a ton of applications of thermal drones, some of the other things we are currently working on include;
-Monitoring animal health and injuries non-invasively.
-Search and rescue - finding people lost at sea or in coastal marsh lands.
-Detecting underground peat fires - a major cause of forest fires in some developing nations and one of the major sources of greenhouse gases.
-Tracking sports people on the pitch and monitoring for injuries.

I'm concerned about the potential military or poaching applications
We were too. The truth is that we are almost certainly miles behind the military, if they wanted to use this technology to hunt humans they would have done it already. As it is for us, we have absolutely no intention of sharing this software with military groups. We take steps to ensure our work is secure against it falling into the wrong hands - ie. poachers, and we vet out potential users very carefully before collaborating.

Astro-ecology? How did that start?
The project started with astrophysicist Steve Longmore and ecologist Serge Wich who are neighbors. One day they were chatting over the back fence about their work, and Serge was telling Steve about his work with drones. He told Steve how ecologists would like to use thermal infrared as the animals really stand out even when they are camouflaged, but he was having problems interpreting the data and dealing with the massive volumes of data being generated from drone surveys. Steve told Serge about how we have loads of techniques for analysing infrared data, and processing massive quantities of data in astrophysics. And that's how the project was born. The team running this Zooniverse project were employed to make the collaboration a success - and we just couldn't resist a job applying astrophysics to conservation using machine learning and drones!