After a semi-final in Singapore, the company which develops tools attached to drones to collect environmental samples did well in the final.
The winner was revealed in Rio de Janeiro recently.
The goal of the competition was to independently inventory the species on a square kilometer of tropical forest in just 24 hours!
— Guillaume Charron, co-founder of Outreach Robotique with Hughes Lavigne.
“The ultimate goal is to revolutionize the way tropical forests are measured and valued, which will propel conservation action and environmental policies, support sustainable bioeconomies, and empower indigenous peoples and local communities to benefit of their intact forests, continues the Sherbrookois. Given our success in this competition, we believe our technology is well positioned to accomplish this in the years to come.”
During the final 72 hours of testing, the Sherbrooke company identified thousands of taxa, including rare species such as the jaguar, the jaguarondi and freshwater dolphins. A final report of 362 pages was submitted. (Outreach Robotics)
In total, no less than ten million US dollars were distributed by XPRIZE Rainforest.
The organizers of the competition justified their choice by the capacity of Outreach Robotics to study 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in 24 hours in addition to producing the most impactful real-time information in 48 hours.
“Among the hundreds of teams that participated in the competition, we were one of six teams to compete in the finals in Brazil this summer. It is remarkable to note that the Limelight Rainforest team was made up of several Quebec players in technologies related to biodiversity. Our company Outreach Robotics, from the Créatek group at the University of Sherbrooke, was in charge of the engineering and robotics of the entire solution, which made it possible to develop and deploy drone technologies,” adds the co-founder.
Étienne Laliberté, for his part, led a group from the University of Montreal within the team, taking charge of mapping the diversity of tree species and estimating carbon sequestration.
François Grondin completed the team, who works at the University of Sherbrooke. The latter produced the acoustic system making it possible to spatially locate moving birds.
An essential technology
In the competition press release, it is possible to learn that Limelight’s unique technology “involves surveillance sensors deployed by drones and a new insect light trap”, which can have a considerable impact on the conservation objectives of the United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
“The future of life on Earth, including that of our own species, will depend on humanity’s collective ability to urgently understand and coexist with the true value of nature on our planet,” said Peter Houlihan, executive vice president of biodiversity and conservation at XPRIZE. Technologies designed and field-tested by XPRIZE Rainforest are capable of rapidly and remotely assessing the biodiversity and ecological knowledge of tropical rainforests on a large scale.
“We are convinced that our technology will revolutionize the way we sample and value the biodiversity of tropical forests,” concludes Mr. Charron.
