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Shvoong Home>Society & News>News Items>Robot hunts rare bird Summary

Robot hunts rare bird

Article Summary   by:anil ekbote    
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This hunting is not for killing. It is for finding the ‘extinct’ ivory-billed woodpecker.This majestic bird of America has not been sighted since about six decades and, therefore, it was feared that it was extinct. But hope is today kindled that it might, after all be not yet extinct. The bird might still be living and it is only a matter of time and chance when it could be found once again. This renewed hope has surged in recent years after a few unconfirmed sightings of the elusive ivory-billed woodpeckers, which are often referred to as “The Holy Grail” of birdwatchers. Scientists from California and Texas have taken up the search for the woodpecker. They have set up video-cameras in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas with the fond hope that they will pick up evidence of the existence of the woodpecker. The video cameras do not just focus on the sky and shoot pictures. If they start doing this the computers’ hard disks will get filled up in no time. To overcome this limitation the scientists have built a robot that scans the skies and picks up birds from other objects. The high-tech Robot uses complex algorithms to send cameras whirring whenever a bird is spotted. To develop software that would distinguish birds from other moving objects in the sky was indeed a challenging task. As the cameras have high resolution the scientists are confident that they’d be able to film a woodpecker even from a distance of twenty feet. Researchers Mark Goldberg from the University of California (Berkeley)and Song Dezhen from the A & M University (Texas) are optimistic that an image of the bird caught by the cameras would once for all settle the doubts over the existence of the ‘extinct’ ivory-billed woodpecker.
Published: February 19, 2007   
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