A Sydney company built drones that can spot a shark in the water better than a person in a helicopter. They have already been used to pull swimmers out of the surf.
The tech
The system is called SharkSpotter. It was built by The Ripper Group with the University of Technology Sydney, and it runs on the Westpac Little Ripper drones that patrol Australian beaches.
The drone streams live video. A deep learning model watches the footage and separates sharks from 16 other categories of things in the water, from dolphins and rays to surfers, swimmers and boats. When it sees a shark, it alerts the operator.
The numbers
UTS puts SharkSpotter’s detection accuracy at about 90%. The old method, spotters in helicopters and light planes, came in under 20%. The Conversation cited figures of 17.1% for helicopters and 12.5% for fixed wing aircraft.
The rescue
In January 2018, a Little Ripper drone dropped a flotation pod to two young swimmers caught in a rip at Lennox Head on the NSW north coast. The whole rescue took 70 seconds. UTS estimates a rescue launched from the beach would have taken six to seven minutes.
The drones also carry gear beyond the camera, including the flotation pod and, according to The Conversation, an electronic shark repellent.
My read
Most AI news is about chatbots and valuations. This is a drone, a model and a flotation pod getting to two kids in a rip in about a minute. This is what AI was actually supposed to be for.