Preserving animal diversity through Capstone projects with UCL
Published Apr 22 2021 12:34 AM 1,649 Views
Microsoft

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What's a capstone project?

University College London (UCL) created the UCL Industry Exchange Network (UCL IXN), which partner their students with organizations worldwide. Organizations define a project, and the student picks something that they can relate to and are passionate about.

 

The goal of those capstone projects is to provide real-world experience to acquired academic knowledge. Through experience, students learn about the industry. They learn about best practices and how to work on a project with deliverables.

 

Learn more about the UCL Industry Exchange Network by visiting the UCL IXN website.

 

What's Project 15 and how it works?

Project 15, on the other hand, is an effort to accelerate conservation and ecosystem sustainability projects with the latest Internet Of Things (IoT) technologies. This is done through an Open Source Software platform.

 

The platform is made to take you 80% of the way. In comparison, the student only provides the remaining 20% — no need to design a cloud architecture from scratch when all the components are already linked together. We can get started faster and achieve our preservation goals just as quickly.

 

Learn more about Project 15 by visiting their website.

Get the code that power Project 15 now on GitHub.

 

Student Capstone Projects

There were many projects this year, but two of them kept our attention. The first project helped us keep track of elephants through Machine Learning Computer Vision. Tracking where the elephants are, where they are going, and how they are doing is vital to ensure that they are kept away from poachers.

 

The second project is about tracking red pandas through the jungle to ensure their wellbeing. To help preserve their ecosystem, they use Azure Custom Vision to help identify the red pandas in an area and ensure their health.

 

If you love elephants, we have a bonus for you. The Elephant Edge challenge in which we participated this year also helps in conserving elephants through GPS tracking, GPS fence, visual and sound monitoring.

 

The amount of work that was done through student projects is incredible. If you want to know more, you need to watch our upcoming events.

 

Upcoming events

You can watch a Livestream with details and demos of all those projects! You can Register Now, or you can catch the Livestream on Learn TV at 8am PDT (UTC-7).

 

While we are talking about events and sustainability, do not miss the Microsoft IoT Hack for Sustainability. We have up to $10,000 in prizes, and it's worth registering. The deadline to participate is May 24th, 2021, at 5pm EDT.

 


On Demand 

 

 

Training Resources

If you want to make a difference, you can start by using the Learn modules the students used while building those projects. Among the modules that will inspire you is Classify Endangered Bird Species with Custom Vision.

 

Do not forget to get started with Project 15 by retrieving the code from GitHub!.

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