Shark attacks are, fortunately, quite rare. However, they do happen and most cases are either fatal or cause life-changing injuries.

Just last week, a fatal shark attack in Australia marked the eighth of the year—an almost 100-year record for the highest annual death toll. Once rare sightings in Southern California beaches are now becoming increasingly common as sharks are preferring the warmer waters close to shore.

Academics from the University of California and San Diego State University have teamed up with AI researchers from Salesforce to create software which can spot when sharks are swimming around popular beach destinations.

Sharks are currently tracked – when at all – by either keeping tabs of tagged animals online or by someone on a paddleboard keeping an eye out. It’s an inefficient system ripe for some AI innovation.

SharkEye uses drones to spot sharks from above. The drones fly preprogrammed paths at a height of around 120 feet to cover large areas of the ocean while preventing marine life from being disturbed.

If a shark is spotted, a message can be sent instantly to people including lifeguards, surf instructors, and beachside homeowners to take necessary action. Future alerts could also be sent directly to beachgoers who’ve signed up for them or pushed via social channels.

The drone footage is helping to feed further research into movement patterns. The researchers hope that by combining with data like ocean temperature, and the movement of other marine life, an AI will be able to predict when and where sharks are most likely to be in areas which may pose a danger to people.

SharkEye is still considered to be in its pilot stage but has been tested for the past two summers at Padaro Beach in Santa Barbara County.

A shark is suspected to have bitten a woman at Padaro Beach over summer when the team wasn’t flying a drone due to the coronavirus shutdown. Fortunately, her injuries were minor. However, a 26-year-old man was killed in a shark attack a few hours north in Santa Cruz just eight days later.

Attacks can lead to sharks also being killed or injured in a bid to save human life. Using AI to help find safer ways for sharks and humans to share the water can only be a good thing.

(Photo by Laura College on Unsplash)

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Despite incidents of reckless flying, drones unlock huge opportunities. We regularly see beautiful photography and videography shot using drones—but, of course, they can do so much more.

Sony has built a stellar reputation in media capture. The company builds great cameras – both for itself and sensors it supplies to other manufacturers (like its new IMX686) – and its software like Vegas Pro is the defacto choice for many creative professionals.

In a press release, Sony wrote:

“Airpeak will support the creativity of video creators to the fullest extent possible, aiming to contribute to the further development of the entertainment industry as well as to improve efficiency and savings in various industries.

Airpeak will also promote this project to enable drone-use with the highest level of safety and reliability in the environments where this has been difficult in the past.”

The focus on supporting video creators is to be expected from Sony, but the mention of various industries suggests the company has bigger plans.

In the photography/videography space alone, Sony will face stiff competition from established players like DJI.

Despite being the current industry leader, DJI has begun diversifying its products in recent years due to a decline in drone popularity for consumer purposes. This is mostly due to increasing restrictions in many countries around where drones can fly and even requiring permits (the FAA, for example, requires users to register all drones over a certain size.)

A patent granted to Sony back in January suggests the company may start relatively simple:

However, Sony could use its AI and robotics expertise to stand out in other exciting areas where drones have a lot of potential such as emergency response, delivering supplies, assisting in warehouses/factories, and even tackling small fires before they spread.

The language Sony uses suggests the company will target a wide range of customers from everyday consumers to large enterprise deployments.

Sony plans to reveal further details about Airpeak in the Spring of 2021.

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While rare, birds can pose a serious problem to aircraft – from broken windshields to engine failures.

That’s not to say bird strikes themselves are uncommon. Between 1990-2015, there were 160,894 bird strikes on US aircraft. Each year, bird strikes cost US airlines an estimated $1.2 billion.

Only .025% (40) of those strikes resulted in an accident. While the danger to human life is low, few of the aforementioned birds will have survived their impromptu meeting with a jet plane.

The engineers behind the project were inspired by the 2009 US Airways Flight 1549 incident which became known as the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ and received a multi-award winning film adaptation named after Captain Sully.

Shortly after take-off from LaGuardia Airport, the plane struck a flock of geese and lost all engine power. The skilled pilots were able to perform a safe water landing on the Hudson River with zero casualties.

Soon-Jo Chung, Team Leader on the drone project, said:

“The passengers on Flight 1549 were only saved because the pilots were so skilled.

It made me think that next time might not have such a happy ending, so I started looking into ways to protect airspace from birds by leveraging my research areas in autonomy and robotics.”

Using drones to herd birds away can be dangerous. Approach incorrectly and the birds could be spooked into scattering in an uncontrolled manner that could pose an even greater danger.

Birds often respond to changes by others near them for a coordinated response. By positioning the drone as a potential danger rather than imminent, the birds along the edge of a flock can be encouraged to make course changes which affect those further into the flock.

Credit: Soon-Jo Chung/Caltech

Rushing in with a drone will cause the birds to panic and act individually.

Chung and his team built an algorithm with this in mind. When testing on a flock of birds near a field in Korea, the researchers found a single drone could keep a flock of dozens of birds out of a designated airspace.

The current limitation is that it can only control one flock of birds at a time. Chung and his team are exploring how the project can be scaled up.

Most drones today are used for entertainment or military purposes. In recent months, we’ve seen a deeper exploration of how they could offer tangible benefits for things such as emergency response.

Today, we’ve seen another example of a benefit drones could bring to society.

The full paper titled ‘Robotic Herding of a Flock of Birds Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’ can be found here.

What are your thoughts on the use of drones to keep birds away from airports?

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