Wiper using wireless collars to stop elephant poaching in Africa

A team of entrepreneurs in the United States have combined their expertise to combat elephant poaching in Africa, creating Wiper, a wireless anti-poaching device that uses GPS tracking and gunshot detection technology to automatically send the location of poaching events to authorities in real-time.

Wiper co-founders Akos Ledeczi from Vanderbilt University and George Wittemyer from Colorado State University told ZDNet they are hoping to thwart poaching at its source using an animal-mounted ballistic shockwave detector.

Wiper uses a low-power acoustic shot detector integrated with a GPS tracking collar to detect the shockwave generated by the supersonic bullet -- a technique used by the military to locate snipers -- so that the collar can recognise a gunshot even if the poacher muffles the shot.

The collar can detect gunshots within a 50-metre radius which means, unlike other trackers such as heart-rate monitors for individual animals, not all animals need to be collared.

Full story at http://zd.net/2rWKo35

Source: ZDNet

 

 

 

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