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WATCH: These Australian companies are helping to keep Australians safe from bushfires
Could drones help detect and fight bushfires? Here are two companies developing technologies to do exactly that.
More than 24 million ha burned and 33 people died during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20.
Here are two Australian companies developing drone technology to assist the early detection and prevention of bushfires — and help to save lives during the dangerous Australian summer.
Using drones to patrol beaches for sharks
The Sharkspotter software uses drone technology to detect sharks, fish and other marine life along Australian beaches.
Summer’s here, which means Australians are flocking to the beach — and this drone technology is keeping swimmers safe by detecting sharks from high in the air.
University of Technology Sydney computer scientist Professor Michael Blumenstein has spent years teaching artificial intelligence algorithms to “see” the world from a drone.
He’s one of the creators of SharkSpotter, a technology that can detect sharks and other marine life swimming off Australian beaches.
The platform uses the real-time feed from a high-resolution camera attached to a drone. The software processes the video stream and analyses it, looking for sharks in the ocean.
“It was always around empowering lifeguards to do their job better, to provide safety on the beach and to save lives,” Blumenstein said.
SharkSpotter is trained to recognise several objects, including 16 different types of marine life and humans, using deep learning. Blumenstein said the technology is given “supervised training”, where researchers provide labelled samples to learn from.
Infographic: Behind the scenes of an award-winning mass timber building
Take a peek behind the curtain at the construction of the award-winning Boola Katitjin, the first building in Western Australia to be constructed using mass timber.
Already being heralded as an icon of engineering ingenuity and innovation, Boola Katitjin is Western Australia’s first mass-engineered timber building.
Designed by Aurecon as an educational space for Murdoch University in Perth, it was recently named Project of the Year at the 2023 Engineers Australia Excellence Awards.
The Excellence Awards judging panel was impressed by how this project has used ingenuity to deliver a sustainable end product.