While we, humans, are living a busy life with technology in the cramped metropolitan cities that are soon to be turned into smart cities, on the far south of the earth, Antarctica, a continent with no humans is also getting a glimpse of artificial intelligence. Antarctica, a place that worst suits humans has been a research hub of scientists for a long time. Today, artificial intelligence is spearheading the way researches are conducted in the isolated continent. Let's take you through some of the famous initiatives of AI in Antarctica.
British Antarctica Survey (BAS) AI Lab is an initiative to focus on many concerning topics like BAS science, engineering, oceanography, climate science, glacial changes, water security, space weather monitoring, tracking icebergs, monitoring wildlife from space, and weather extremes. The researchers at the institute focus on artificial intelligence and data science to tackle environmental challenges. The BAS AI Lab also leads projects under 'The Alan Institute's EURO 40 million AI for Science and Government research program, including Understanding Arctic sea ice loss and improving tracking of iceberg populations in the Southern Ocean.
Digital twin is a technology that is used to mimic or represent the existing system in a digital way. Antarctica is a large continent with minimum human intervention. Researchers can't travel there every time they want to encounter or record a change in the environment. But technologies like digital twin are a handy solution that helps advance the understanding of the ice sheet's spura and subglacial hydrology, its evolutions, and its role within the broader ice sheet and ocean systems. The University's Schools of GeoSciences and Informatics is working on creating the digital twin. Recently, the institution has received funding from the European Space Agency (ESA). The project comes under the European Commission's plan to build a replica of the earth in support of decision-making as part of its green deal action plans and digital strategy.
The digital twin echoes on the ice sheets present in Antarctica, which is the key component that reflects on global sea level, ocean circulation, and biogeochemical processes. Henceforth, it is mandatory for researchers to take a close look at the geographical changes in the continent before coming up with decisions. In order to make digital twin accurate, artificial intelligence and machine learning are also employed. For example, earlier, machine learning methods were used to better infer the actual ice depth directly from satellite measurements in Greenland.
According to a United Nations report released in 2019, 'One million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction.' And unfortunately, penguins are among them. Penguins are unique creatures that are sensitive to human activities. Their introverted character makes them less competitive towards introduced predators. Henceforth, they fall victim to human greed and the number of living penguins is drastically plummeting.
Gramener, a data science consulting company is using artificial intelligence to solve Penguin outnumbering. In partnership with Microsoft, Gramener is using an AI model to identify what a penguin looks like from different angles and perspectives, and also trains them to count the number of penguins. Later, Intel joined hands with these companies to support the Penguin population. The partners are now using computer vision to help ecologists count the remaining penguins faster and more accurately than before. The companies are availing computer vision to find Antarctica's penguin colonies from Oxford University's Penguin Watch Project, which over the past decade has sourced millions of time-lapse images from camera traps in over 40 locations and recruited online volunteers to annotate them.
Robots have been the center of monitoring in isolated areas for a long time. Especially, at places like Antarctica where the living condition is worse, robots act as the initial research supporters. Now, robots are a part of Antarctica's seven-year research project that is led by Monash University under the Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF) move. Under the project, researchers will build specific robotic systems to collect data and informing scientific models. They will help monitor the continent without human intrusion.
