ProxLogs

The Problem

Throughout the world, species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. So much so that scientists now think we are in the 6th mass extinction event, with much of this is driven by human activities. There is a need to develop new tools to allow us to monitor where animals are, how they move within a landscape and how they interact with each other and habitat features in order to design effective conservation programs or interventions. This is particularly true for smaller animals, as we know far less about their movements or behaviour. Due to their small size, they can be hard to observe without disturbance, and are often active during night time. However, the majority of remaining species are small, including many highly threatened ones. Even when species are large enough to carry sophisticated devices such as GPS trackers, the weight restrictions for small animals means that data is low resolution, and the cost can be prohibitively high, limiting the number of individuals in a population that can be monitored. This is problematic: If we don’t know where or how animals are moving, we cannot identify the best areas of habitat to conserve or assess the species specific impact of human activities. If you only tag a couple of individuals you risk basing interventions for whole populations on individuals that may be atypical. Furthermore, because many tracking approaches are very expensive, this limits who can carry out this kind of research.

Our Proposal

Recently we developed miniaturised loggers (~1g) which use bluetooth to detect when two loggers are within a given distance of each other, giving detailed temporal information on animal associations. However, with this we lack information about where the animals are moving, and how behaviour relates to the environment. Currently remote offloading of data is handled by a single device we call a gateway. The gateway saves data onto an SD card and needs to be placed near a known site where the animal is likely to spend a lot of time, eg a roost or a nest. We propose to substantially develop these devices to add extra information about animal movements by creating a linked network of devices that can monitor animal movements and provide spatial accuracy across a large area, with all the data routed back to a single device or offloaded over the cellular network. This will not only increase the amount of information we are able to gather but it will also make monitoring a far easier process. This will require developing both the hardware to create the devices distributed within the environment but also software development to allow the communication and offloading of data, and algorithmic approaches to more accurately determine the spatial location of individuals through triangulation. Finally, we intend to further improve the devices to include environmental monitoring sensors (e.g. temperature, humidity, light levels) to provide further context about animal behaviour.

We Assume that...

Knowing extra information about environmental conditions is something people are willing to pay extra for

The system is being deployed in areas with cell phone coverage (for remote data download rather than download onto an SD card, although the ability to download onto the SD card will be retained)

Using a system of linked gateways will provide detailed enough spatial information

Constraints to Overcome

Previously, to get spatial data from the loggers you would have to download from several devices, which is inefficient. We want to make the system more flexible and increase the data we collect by creating gateways with greater transmission capabilities, automated data downloading and sensors for recording extra information about the environment. The biggest challenges will be to allow the gateways to efficiently transfer data and communicate with each other so that data can be sourced back to a single “master” gateway that the user interacts with. The gateways will be low energy to ensure that they are small and discreet in the environment, meaning they are less likely to be tampered with and can remain in place for long periods of time. Incorporating the extra sensors will give additional hardware and software challenges. Finally, the gateways will need to be encased to ensure hardiness when placed in field conditions.

Current Work

Building the prototype gateway hardware including the inclusion of different sensors Testing different housing options and creating a bespoke 3D printed design Software development to allow the gateways to talk to eachother Field trials of the system, including with selected end users to determine what works and what doesnt Grant writing to develop a full prototype system that we can begin to distribute

Current Needs

Product design and 3D printing to create the housing Potentially support with deriving algorithms to improve the localisation accuracy