Neuro-X seminar: Prof Tilo Burghardt, AIs in the wild: co-advancing field biology and animal biometrics

Digital sensor technology, communication networks, and recent artificial intelligence breakthroughs have together transformed how scientists gather and interpret ecologically relevant data for field biology and ultimately species monitoring and conservation. In fact, measuring and interpreting manifestations of animal life (a.k.a. Animal Bio-metrics) is now firmly placed in the computational realm. Our research at Bristol pioneered aspects of this field more than 20 years ago and today contributes to evolving this growing field. This talk will trace some of the key concepts at the heart of this evolving AI subject cluster - up to the latest AI-driven systems that can be used to help monitor animal populations in the wild. The talk will relate animal biometrics to other emerging terminology such as imageomics and ecological computer science within the wider context of AI, computation and biology. Finally, the talk will exemplify how such visual AI applied to animal life is being used to help conservation, ecology, and - going full circle - smart farming. Various lines of work at the University of Bristol will serve as examples to show the diversity of this emerging interdisciplinary field anchored in computer vision. Finally, the talk will highlight some key technical challenges today and the need for cross-disciplinary engineering.