Deployment of Embedded Edge-AI for Wildlife Monitoring in Remote Regions

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in ecological contexts to monitor animal and insect populations. Species of interest are those in danger of extinction, and those that play pivotal roles in agriculture. Noticing population declines or geographical shifts early enough for intervention can prevent local famine and disruption to the global food chain. Traditionally, data are collected in the field using human labor or sensors. Applicable classification models then analyze the data on central servers. The most expensive, and sometimes dangerous part of the remote sensing solution is the human labor of visiting the sensors, retrieving data, and changing batteries. Constantly sending all readings by radio is expensive in power. Instead, having AI in the sensors process readings, and only transmitting results could lead to an indefinitely autonomous, renewably powered solution. We implemented an elephant vocalization detector on a small processor board, and demonstrate that such a device can be operated at low enough power levels with considerable freedom of choice among AI technologies. We achieved a mean of 1.6W, in the best case staying within 75% of memory limits. Measurements covered three inference models, two batch sizes, and two floating point word width settings.