David Rhode

Please Note

This person can no longer be contacted through the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington

Eliminating introduced predators from New Zealand is an on going objective sought The Department of Conservation (DoC) for many years. As predator numbers decrease, finding the remaining pests become an increasingly difficult task. In an effort to overcome these issues, the Science for Technology Innovation National Science Challenge (SfTI) is funding a research project to find a technology focused solution. To this end, the Bio-Security Spearhead project ”Detecting the Last Predator” was born with the goal of designing a novel sensor device swarm capable of three key abilities:
- Detect the proximity/location of a predator by observing and learning the local environment, as well the learning the unique signals produced by predators.
- Rearrangement of the sensor locations when the sensor network detects no pests in its vicinity.
- Enabling the sensor network to be at an operational scale of 1 sensor per 300,000m^2 (0.3km^2)