LifeBots| Scanning for Lifeforms
Scanning for Lifeforms
Lifebots – Discovery of Life
Summary
The Lifebots initiative will contribute to the process of discovering, monitoring, caring and registering documentation of new species in the Amazon rainforest. Information gathering will be trough trained robots with a combination of artificial intelligence and people who lives in the forest. The information collected, complemented with information from NASA satellites, will be evaluated on Google Cloud platforms. The processed information must be treated appropriately for two target audiences. The scientific community will obtain information from the same Google platform through scientific platforms. Alliances will be made with content creators for dissemination on society.
How We Addressed This Challenge
A solution that integrates human, social and technological elements is develped and it will help us with the discovery and maintenance of biodiversity. The combination of information from NASA along with information from the natives will expand the accuracy of the project results. By integrating science with the mass media, a different culture of dissemination of scientific information will be created not only for people who know about the topics but also for people with little interest in it.
The importance of the solution lies in the sum of all its parts. NASA's technology element offers training information to scientists and machines. Including natives within the project increases the possibilities of including essential information. They will offer first-hand information about the tropical environment, its culture, its flora and its fauna. This will also impact on its diffusion. The community will understand the importance of the environment and its care not only from the hand of scientists. Also from natives who understand the subject better.
The project wants to optimize the time in the development and processing of information of new and existing biodiverse elements through the first-hand information of natives, robots and researchers. In addition, it is desired to reduce the gap between caring for the environment as an element of research and an active initiative for society. Social networks will become the perfect dissemination platform for the community.
In order to know how the project works, we will take the perspective of the two target audiences. The first is the scientific community that is always looking for information for project development. Scientific dissemination platforms are ideal for the dissemination of information. Even take advantage of Google's algorithm to promote your own information. The public not understood in the matter has its own language. Those who best speak that language and manage its dissemination are content creators on social networks. They will obtain much of this information in a more processed way and will be ambassadors of science in a unique way for the style they handle.
There are three major goals to achieve. The revelation of new and better information gathering methods by combining the human and technological elements. The discovery and monitoring of new elements of biodiversity thanks to information from NASA, robotics and natives. The dissemination of scientific information as an initiative for the acquisition and improvement of knowledge for the general public.
How We Developed This Project
A couple of days ago, we read the news of the discovery of revealing images on Mars. Research indicates that these images reveal the existence of underground lakes on the planet. The impact was instantaneous and moved the world for a whole day. The next day, after reading this news, we reviewed the challenges of NASA and we met the present challenge. We wondered the following: Why not worry more about life on Earth? Our planet has approximately 8.7 million species, of which only 1/6 has been identified. The Lifebots project will solve this challenge in a scientific and social way.
As students of a technology career, developing and improving it is our top priority. As members of the Robotics and IoT Club, the integration of software and hardware is our reason for being. As part of society, it is necessary to open their eyes to new information through a technological and social approach.
For the modeling of the robots, the Tinkercad tool was used. The designs are based on rugged, heavy-duty robots so that they can survive the harsh environment of tropical forests. The Google platform provides all the necessary tools for the development of the project in the cloud. NASA satellites will complement information from Google's platform and autonomous robots.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The information gathering process is supported by the tools offered by the International Space Station. For this case we need information primarily from tropical areas in the jungle. ECOSTRESS offers information on the detection of changes in vegetation based on its temperature and humidity. GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Research) provides information on the structure of forests on Earth and their topography. The robots will be trained for patrol with this information. Swarm intelligence algorithms are the most suitable for this task, since teamwork is essential for survival in the jungle. This training is reinforced with the information that the natives of the area will offer. This with the aim of reducing investigation time. LoRa WAN is the ideal swarm communication protocol due to its excellent performance in distributed environments.
For the processing of the information we will use the Google platform. Map of Life is a Google tool that allows us to evaluate the conditions of the species. It contains data sets of information about life on the planet. Behind there is a work with Google Cloud Platform for the processing of all this data. These platforms are powerful enough to process new information provided by our project plus the existing one. Tools like Google BigQuery are in charge of the intelligent processing of all this information.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
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