Wildlife Survey and Cowboy Drone

I spend a lot of time hiking around in the snow taking pictures of animal tracks and maintaining wildlife survey cameras for Cascadia Wild. And I can’t help but daydream about Drone/Robot assistants doing a lot of this for me.

  • a fixed autonomous camera that can identify animals
  • a wheeled/legged robot that could survey a trail for tracks
  • a drone that could survey for tracks
  • a cowboy drone to scare wolves away from livestock

It turns out ranchers let their cattle run wild on public lands without any cowboys to protect them from wolves. And when wolves take a bit to much of their bottom line, they ask the forest service to exterminate whole packs. That’s what inspired the cowboy drone idea.

If I just mash these tutorials together (with Cole’s help) we might be able to make something out of these daydreams.

Written on April 24, 2016