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SIMA Innovation Award for the Wildlife Finder Project

Test assembly for wildlife finder systems on a tractor . Fawn in a meadow

At SIMA 2011, the international trade fair for agricultural suppliers which took place February 20-24, 2011 in Paris, the "Wildlife Finder" project received an innovation award for a “technical sensor system to detect wild animals during the mowing of agricultural land.” The Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF) is decisively involved in the relevant development work and is responsible for the scientific coordination of the project.

The participants in the “Wildlife finder Research Project,” which include besides the DLR Remote Sensing Technology Institute the CLAAS company (project leader), the ISA Industrieelektronik company, and universities in Munich (TUM) and Stuttgart-Hohenheim, expect that in the next few years it will be possible to significantly improve the protection of wildlife with modern technology. Toward this end, sensors and analytic methodologies are being developed as part of ongoing work to reliably detect fawns in high grass. Besides modern cameras designed for the visual and infrared spectral ranges, microwave technology and laser systems are being employed. While systems installed directly on the tractor alert the driver to the presence of wild animals during mowing, cameras on small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used to search the meadows before mowing begins.

The German Ministry of Education and Research has supported this project since 2008.

DLR has a tradition of interest in wildlife rescue approaches. For over twenty years this subject has been addressed as an interesting sideline of remote sensing in Oberpfaffenhofen. Since 1998, after a successful technology transfer measure for the “DLR Wildlife Finder,” portable equipment containing infrared sensors for detecting fawns has been commercially available.