Can current IoT solutions help save animals?
What IoT solutions do we already have, that if applied to animal conservation, could help solve environmental challenges?
What if like-minded IoT solution providers, like Rajant, could accelerate collaboration around a joint mission?
Consideration of these questions, the ongoing drive to enable unfailing connectivity, and a heart for giving back, drove Rajant to join Project 15.
Project 15 from Microsoft formally launched earlier this year with an ecosystem of 14 technology partners, known as “Friends of Project 15”. Though this ecosystem will grow, Rajant is honored to be among the inaugural “Friends”, keeping company with organizations such as Intel, Tech Data, and Avnet.
As partners, we are individually bringing innovative solutions to the market every day to meet the needs of our business customers. In joining together as Project 15, our solutions can be reimagined and applied to other uses, which could impact the planet in positive ways. With Microsoft Azure as the common thread and, more specifically, Microsoft’s “AI for Earth” initiative, we can collectively accelerate technology development for environmental sustainability, empowering conservation and helping endangered species.
Project 15 was named after a sad, but actual, fact that every 15 minutes poachers kill an African elephant. If allowed to continue, elephants will become extinct within 10 years. The name, combined with this fact, makes it profoundly memorable, yet the mission of Project 15 extends far beyond elephants. There is a focus on bears, orangutans, lions, and more who are also disappearing.
The mission of Microsoft’s Project 15 is to raise awareness in the partner ecosystem and develop positive change through collaboration and IoT technology. In building a bridge for the scientific community, partners can look at the solutions we have already, create the connection to talk through alternative applications, and be unified to solve animal conservation issues as fast as possible.
Rajant is currently testing our BreadCrumb® wireless nodes with horses. Our small lightweight DX2 placed on the horse’s saddle pad combines with cameras and sensors to transmit “live” video and metadata over Rajant’s mesh network. Not only do we see the animal’s vantage point as it is ridden, but we can dynamically monitor the horse’s health vitals, such as heart rate.
With the Project 15 ecosystem, we could do similar work with endangered species out in the wild. Rajant BreadCrumbs, in combination with RFID tags, could track elephant herds as they roam and monitor if they stray into danger. Rajant nodes could enable drones to look for poachers or sound a warning to deter predators over vast expanses where no fixed network is available.
This is the kind of innovative thinking that Microsoft’s Project 15 seeks. Others who are of like mind and capabilities are encouraged to join as a scientist or tech partner. The possibilities are wildly unlimited.