To help combat animal poaching, Intel has introduced a new artificial intelligence (AI) camera connected to a wide area internet of things (IoT) network. This camera can detect poachers in near real time and alert rangers with the hope of stopping poachers before they strike. This new solution, called TrailGuard AI, was built on anti-poaching prototypes funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and the National Geographic Society. The technology inside the camera uses Intel’s Movidius vision processing units combined with running deep neural network algorithms for object detection and image classification inside the camera.
Despite the best efforts of wildlife reserve park rangers and national governments, poaching is still a massive problem, particularly with the hunting of elephants. Estimates suggest that an elephant is killed every 15 minutes by a poacher, resulting in 35,000 being lost every year.
The biggest problem for protecting elephants, gorillas, tigers and other endangered creatures is the sheer size of these reserves, with rangers often only finding out about a poacher long after they have killed an animal.
