A pack of robot dogs is currently roaming the grounds of Blenheim Palace to monitor the impact of climate change on the estate.
According to The Times:
Blenheim Palace may look like an 18th-century country house stuck in time.
However, the estate near Oxford, home to the Duke of Marlborough, has become a testing ground for a pack of robot dogs monitoring the impact of climate change.
They were designed by Oxford University’s Robotics Institute (ORI).
The dogs use hyperspectral image analysis and artificial intelligence to gather information on the estate’s woodlands, which are home to more than 2,800 animal and plant species.
David Green, the head of innovation at Blenheim, said the robots would be able to record more comprehensive and accurate information than human researchers.
“The estate, with its ancient woodlands, heritage sites and parkland, provides a hugely diverse environment,” he said.
“It’s effectively a ‘living laboratory’ where new research and technologies can be trialled and tested.
“Our goal is to use innovation to solve real-world problems across the estate and working together with experts like the ORI will allow us to do that much more effectively.
“One of the main challenges in biology is to be able to collect the data in a way that is fast, reliable, and integrated.
Training and fieldwork is hard to do with humans and the data sets created can be sub-optimal, so using autonomous robots allows researchers at Oxford University to gain access to data pipelines faster.”
