Guarding the Earth From the Edge

Earth is the gift that keeps on giving. The environment we inhabit sustains us and asks for little in return. Urban expansion and industrial exploitation have affected the dynamics of this relationship, and we take much more than we give. How can we turn things around?

Hackster and the EDGE AI FOUNDATION present Edge AI Earth Guardians to showcase innovative edge AI solutions that protect our planet, specifically with a focus on wildlife protection, deforestation prevention, and ecosystem monitoring. These submissions will serve to spotlight environmental challenges and leverage low-power edge computing in solving them.

The competition begins on July 29th and ends on September 24th. In the meantime, here are some of our favorite ecosystem protection and conservation projects to help inspire you.

EleTect: TinyML and IoT-Based Smart Wildlife Tracker

Elephants are crucial to our environment. They are a keystone species because they create and protect habitats needed by other species. Areas with elephants are richer in biodiversity.

Africa’s elephant population is declining at an estimated rate of 8% per year, a situation attributed to the demand for ivory tusks globally. This demand is sustained by ivory’s cultural status and the persistent, incorrect belief that elephants are not an endangered species. Meanwhile, the elephants are being killed faster than they are born, and the threat of extinction is becoming more real.

Elephant monitoring is needed to protect these keystone species from poaching, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict. Dhruv Sheth’s EleTect is a collection of vision, audio, and accelerometer tinyML models built to support wildlife tracking and monitoring. EleTect employs the ElephantEdge tracking collar to monitor the elephants and identify predators, bees, wildfires, and poachers. It can also detect when bulls are in musth, a periodic condition associated with aggressive behaviors and high testosterone levels.

“Elephants are the gardeners of the ecosystems as their roaming in itself creates space for other species to thrive,” said Tim van Dam, Smart Parks co-founder. These gardeners also need to thrive, and a proper tracking system will aid conservation efforts.

Wildlife Sanctuary Monitor

Hendra Kusumah lives in Indonesia, one of the richest countries in biodiversity and home to the third-largest tropical forest. The country has several endemic species that are not found anywhere else. National parks, nature reserves, and marine protected areas make up a wide conservation network spanning about 20% of the country’s landmass. However, conservation challenges persist.

Kusumah developed a wildlife sanctuary monitor to monitor the conservation forests and the animals living in them. The device uses the Sensor Prototype Kit from Seeed Studio (SenseCAP K1100) to detect animal sounds, gunshots, and wildfires, and send the data to a dashboard.

The Javan Rhinoceros and Sumatran orangutan are two of the most critically endangered species in Indonesia. Kusumah's sanctuary monitor can identify these animals and any risks to them (wildfires, gunshots) with audio, vision, and sensor fusion models.

It aids in the preservation of these culturally significant creatures and the lush forests they live in.

Algae Bloom Detector

Algae bloom occurs when the population of algae in a body of water increases rapidly, often due to human pollution. Toxic algae blooms can harm other organisms in the water, disrupt food chains, and contaminate drinking water. The early detection of these blooms can protect marine life and public health.

Kutluhan Aktar’s algae deep bloom detector takes and analyzes underwater images, detecting toxic algae blooms before visual signs surface. A borescope camera captures the images to be analyzed by an object detection model running on a Raspberry Pi 4. Water quality and temperature readings complete the warning system, and results are sent to the user via Twilio’s WhatsApp API and Notecard.

Aktar describes the bloom detector as a “budget-friendly and easy-to-use prewarning system.” An algae bloom is often a symptom of an underlying pollution issue, but a prewarning system will aid marine species protection and assist policy making.

Illegal Logging Detection and Alert

Deforestation is the largest contributor to habitat and biodiversity loss. Illegal logging is a worrisome global trend, prevalent in most tropical countries and parts of Europe. The scale alone makes it a difficult and expensive problem to solve.

Most developing countries have park ranger teams that are understaffed and overworked. Most of them would appreciate any assistance that would make their jobs easier.

Salman Faris’ project assists park rangers in detecting unauthorized vehicle activity in conservation zones. The tinyML Forest Ranger uses audio detection models deployed on ultra-low-power nodes and sends the data to a dashboard for monitoring and analysis. Faris says the system can be extended to send real-time email or SMS alerts to the rangers.

Our environment is the largest contributor to the growth of the global economy, and with proper protection and conservation practices aided by technology, it will continue to provide for generations to come.