Dr Tom Richardson (Aerospace engineering) and Professor Jim Freer (Geographical Sciences) are working with International Animal Rescue (IAR), ShadowView, and Skycap in order to develop an Unmanned Air System (UAS or Drone), which can be used to track newly released Orangutans in Borneo. Currently Orangutans are tracked using hand held scanners carried by operators moving on foot through the rainforest – this is a very time consuming and difficult task. These scanners are used to detect small radio transmitters that have been implanted in the Orangutans prior to release.

This pilot project will use a UAS to fly low over the rainforest canopy in order to detect the low power signals produced by these implants. Using existing technology from the University of Bristol, this is a proof of concept in order to demonstrate the potential of the techniques, prior to the submission of a more extensive, longer ranging and technically challenging proposal.

Update June 2016

So far the research group has supported the development of a prototype system for tracking Orangutans, working Dirk Gorissen from Machine Doing and The World Bank.

Dirk took the prototype out to Borneo in March/April of this year and demonstrated that an airborne UAS could pick up the signal from a ground-based orangutan.  You can read his report about this online.

Dr Tom Richardson has taken on a PhD student from August 2016 who will be working on this project by tracking orangutans in Borneo for at least the first six months. The research group will be aiming to take the second version of the system out to Borneo, late 2016 or early 2017.