China builds robot factory workers, robot dogs, and is a world leader, admittedly in a small field, in the manufacture of robot football players.
It has now put its skills to environmental use. Somewhere on the steppes of northwest China, a robot antelope is galloping about the hills, with a rather ungainly stride, seeking to infiltrate itself into herds of the real thing.
Up to now, monitoring the behaviour of rare and endangered species has depended on human observation and camera traps. The information provided by camera traps is by its nature partial, while the trouble with human observation is that the human presence affects the behaviour of the target animals.
A fur specialist repairs the robotic antelope in the Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve
JIAO XUFENG/XINHUA/ALAMY
The bionic antelope, built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the firm Deep Robotics, based in the country’s artificial intelligence capital Hangzhou, is supposed to be the solution.
Armed with 5G communications systems and artificial intelligence, it can lumber with the best of the antelope herds while sending information back to base.
This data is “generating detailed reports that offer valuable insights for scientific research and conservation efforts”, Lian Xinming, the project’s head, told the Xinhua state news agency, which sponsored it.
The Tibetan antelope, also known as the chiru, has a range extending across the Tibetan plateau into India and Bhutan. Its under-fur has been long sought for its softness, and used to make shahtoosh shawls, genuine versions of which sell for tens of thousands of pounds.
The real thing ranges far across the Tibetan plateau, and there are thought to be 100,000 to 150,000 of them
MA MINGYAN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE/VCG/GETTY IMAGES
It has over the years been protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and designated as endangered by the World Conservation Union, but numbers are growing again, in part thanks to conservation efforts.
A million of the animals once roamed free. That fell to 65,000 in the 1990s, but there are now believed to be between 100,000 and 150,000 living in the wild. The breed is regarded as “near threatened”.
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The robo-antelope spy has been introduced into China’s main reserve dedicated to their protection, the Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve in Qinghai province, which has an average elevation of more than 4,500 metres.
Extreme cold in winter is the evolutionary reason for the antelope’s abundant fur, but it still takes three of the animals to provide enough for a single shahtoosh.
The robot can cover 2km at a time, and though it is said to not move as gracefully or swiftly as its natural counterparts, it has “successfully integrated into the herds”, Xinhua said.