Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
In Brazil, about 16 wild animals become roadkill every second. Thus, a computer scientist has come up with a futuristic solution: using AI to alert drivers to the presence of animals.
According to the Brazilian Centre for Road Ecology, some 475 million vertebrate animals die on the road every year.
Shocked by the carnage in the world’s most biodiverse country, computer science student Gabriel Souto Ferrante sprang into action.
The 25-year-old is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Sao Paulo. He created a database with thousands of images of the five species most likely to be killed in traffic and trained an AI model to recognise them.
To make the project a reality, Souto said scientists would need “support from the companies that manage the roads”, including access to cameras and devices that can alert drivers.
