Counting and keeping an eye on a certain group is a daunting task. It requires steady focus and attention. I can’t seem to imagine how difficult it would be if I was tasked to monitor 300,000 penguins. Thankfully, we have machines that could make our jobs easier and faster.
How do you keep a close and regular eye on 300,000 nesting pairs of Adélie penguins spread over two square kilometres of ice? Send in the drones, of course.
But not without a plan. It helps to have an algorithm that can partition the space, assign destination points to each drone and figure out how to move them through those points in the most efficient way, limiting backtracking and redundant travel.
Get that right, and you can do detailed visual surveys in a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. Researchers at Stanford University, US, developed just such a system and put it through its paces at Cape Crozier, near McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Know more about this story over at Cosmos Magazine.
(Image Credit: Kunal Shah/ Cosmos)