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RoboticsCats x WWF Hong Kong: AI bird detection

Did you know?

Mai Po and the Inner Deep Bay provide food and habitat for over 60,000 birds from more than 400 species each year.

Fig 1: Mai Po Nature Reserve. Source: WWF-Hong Kong

Located on the northwestern corner of Hong Kong, the Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay wetlands are recognised as a Wetland of International Importance under the prestigious Ramsar Convention. For more than three decades, Mai Po Nature Reserve has been a paradise for birds and a beautiful, irreplaceable piece of China’s wetland kaleidoscope.

The five main habitats in Mai Po Nature Reserve and the surrounding area – gei wai, freshwater ponds, inter-tidal mudflats, mangroves and reedbeds – are home to a host of wildlife.

Fig 2: Where is this marvellous scenery? Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong.

It is our pleasure to partner with World Wide Fund For Nature Hong Kong (WWF- Hong Kong) to explore using visual AI technologies to detect birds in the Mai Po Nature Reserve.

Our LookOut wildfire detection service is monitoring forests in different parts of the world to early detect forest fire ignitions and empower firefighters to take timely actions to mitigate wildfire risks and damages. We sometimes see birds in the areas we are monitoring. Wildfires cause anxiety. Birds bring peace.

Fig 3: More birds. Less wildfires.
Fig 4: A camera is installed at Mai Po Nature Reserve to capture bird photos.

WWF-Hong Kong and us discussed to explore joint research to apply artificial intelligence in wildlife protection. Both teams are keen to try new things. We believe technologies can help us to better monitor, measure, and maintain our natural environment.

Fig 5: “The nature is beautiful. I am the luckiest camera in the world!”

We deployed a camera system in the Mai Po Nature Reserve. The camera will capture good quality bird photos. We will work together with WWF-Hong Kong to label the photos for supervised machine learning processes. We will explore to use AI to do real-time bird detection. The teams are excited about this research project.

Fig 6: Great Egrets in Mai Po Nature Reserve

“Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.”- Roger Tory Peterson

Please contact us at info@roboticscats.com if you have any question or suggestion.

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