Plymouth Rock Technologies Announces Contract for Drones with AI Monitoring of Endangered Species and Poacher Identification in Madagascar
Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc., a leader in developing detection apparatus and unmanned technologies, is pleased to announce a contract for the sale and delivery of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (“Durrell”) to perform critical environmental operations in Madagascar.
At the beginning of 2019, a team of conservationists from Durrell, alongside researchers from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) visited Lac Alaotra to trial the use of drone-based thermal infrared cameras as a new way of monitoring the lemurs and identifying any potential poachers. Thermal or infrared imaging is the process of taking digital pictures with a specialized camera, which record infrared or heat radiation as opposed to visible light. In short, the drone would fly over large areas of otherwise inaccessible marshes and detect the lemurs from their body heat, making them much easier to spot and allowing the team to obtain more accurate estimates of their population size. In a single 20-minute flight, the drone was able to cover a greater area of the marsh than a canoe team could cover in two days, hugely increasing the efficiency of the surveys.