Artificial Intelligence rules our world – from the algorithms that decide what movies would suit you to the meal suggestions you get on food delivery apps. But perhaps, for the first time, AI is going to be used to ensure the well-being of wild animals.
The Nasscom, Capgemini, Emerging Technologies Wing of Govt of Telangana, the Forest Department of Telangana and Telangana AI Mission have joined hands to launch the Forest AI Grand Challenge, inviting deep tech start-ups to come up with ideas to build solutions to help monitor wildlife in Telangana forests.
“A tiger may be ill or under a treatment regime. AI can be useful in predicting its probable movements based on its behaviour, using the pictures that the camera traps have taken,” Praveen Mokkapati, Deputy Director of Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies), told Business Line.
Using voluminous data, the AI models can spot blood stains or a limping animal, helping the officials to zero in on the area.
Though the camera traps already abound, the challenge currently is that they take hundreds of pictures of a single animal. AI can be used to segregate them and help predict the likely movements of animals. “This will help the officials locate the animals easily as each camera has geo-coordinates,” he said.
The winning start-up will get financial assistance to convert their ideas into action and build a solution. “If a solution is built here, it can be used elsewhere,” Praveen said.
Human-animal conflict
An AI solution can also help forest officials address human-animal conflicts. “The human presence inside the forest area can be potentially dangerous because of the threat of attack by carnivores. And humans might be preventing carnivores from demonstrating their usual forest behaviour,” he said.
AI can be used to identify potential areas of conflict and prevent them in time.
Through the Challenge, the organisers plan to select 10 start-ups and help them build solutions. The collaborating organisations would provide mentorship, financial support and technologies, if need be.
The start-ups will be given access to Serengeti datasets (a huge repository of wildlife photos), to help them build the solutions.