BirdRecorder's AI on Sky: Safeguarding birds of prey by detection and classification of tiny objects around wind turbines

TL;DR

BirdRecorder is an AI-powered system designed to detect and classify birds near wind turbines in real-time, aiming to reduce bird collisions and promote sustainable renewable energy development.

Contribution

The paper introduces BirdRecorder, a novel AI-based anti-collision system integrating advanced detection, tracking, and hardware acceleration for real-time bird protection.

Findings

High detection accuracy in field tests

Real-time processing within 800 m range

Outperforms existing bird detection methods

Abstract

The urgent need for renewable energy expansion, particularly wind power, is hindered by conflicts with wildlife conservation. To address this, we developed BirdRecorder, an advanced AI-based anti-collision system to protect endangered birds, especially the red kite (Milvus milvus). Integrating robotics, telemetry, and high-performance AI algorithms, BirdRecorder aims to detect, track, and classify avian species within a range of 800 m to minimize bird-turbine collisions. BirdRecorder integrates advanced AI methods with optimized hardware and software architectures to enable real-time image processing. Leveraging Single Shot Detector (SSD) for detection, combined with specialized hardware acceleration and tracking algorithms, our system achieves high detection precision while maintaining the speed necessary for real-time decision-making. By combining these components, BirdRecorder outperforms existing approaches in both accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we summarize results on field tests and performance of the BirdRecorder system. By bridging the gap between renewable energy expansion and wildlife conservation, BirdRecorder contributes to a more sustainable coexistence of technology and nature.