Intel’s Project Corail to monitor at-risk Reef Population

For commemorating Earth Day, Intel detailed Project Corail. Moreover, it happened in partnership with Accenture and Sulubaai Environmental Foundation. The foundation is a Philippine-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting Palawan’s natural resources. Project Corail is an artificial intelligence-powered platform that analyzes and monitors the resilience of coral reefs. Since its launch in May 2019, it has collected 40,000 images of the reef that surrounds Pangatalan Island. Thus, researchers have leveraged gauging reef health in real-time.

Project Corail can be used for monitoring more of the world’s at-risk reef population if the pilot program in Palawan is successful. It is important to note that stresses such as global climate change and overfishing, people will kill an estimated 90% of reefs in the next century. Moreover, considering that reefs not only protect coastlines from tropical storms, it is a worthwhile mission. Beaches also provide income and food for 1 billion people. Thus, they generate $9.6 billion from tourism and recreation alone each year.

Project Corail is consisting of a transmitting device (either 4G or Wi-Fi), batteries, and marine-grade solar panels. It also includes a camera attached to the mooring line. An onshore PC processes images with an Intel Arria 10 FPGA, while an Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 plugged into a Raspberry Pi handles on-buoy computing.

To deploy the buoy, it required to build a concrete underwater platform Sulubaai Sulu-Reef Prosthesis. Thus, it provided strong support for unstable coral fragments. The Sulu-Reef Prosthesis is incorporating pieces of living coral that will expand and grow, according to Intel. Thus, it provides a habitat for marine life and fish.

Project Corail

Via an Azure application running on the Pi, images captured Project Corail transmits from the camera to the PC at regular intervals. A custom-trained machine learning model is a part of the Applied Intelligence Video Analytics Services Platform (VASP). It classifies and counts the marine population. Moreover, the data is funneling from the PC to Microsoft Azure for collation in reporting dashboards.

For the future, the Project Corail is planning to deploy a better-optimized artificial intelligence classifier model and a backup power supply. They also considered infrared cameras, which will allow for night shots. Moreover, they will adapt the platform for studying tropical fish migration rates and human intrusion into areas underwater.

Project Corail is not Intel’s first foray into the artificial intelligence-enabled environmental conversation. The chipmaker announced TrailGuard artificial intelligence, last year, a collaboration with the nonprofit Resolve. Resolve is using motion-detecting, data-transmitting cameras for curbing African elephant poaching. Moreover, Intel teamed up, more recently, with Microsoft’s artificial intelligence. They teamed for data science and Earth initiative consultancy Gramener. It is for helping ecologists keep tabs on Antarctic penguin populations.

Moreover, the Alphabet’s R&D subsidiary X unveiled its next “moonshot project.” The company is striving to improve the health of the ocean by automatically logging and tracking the behavior of fish over time.

The oceans are constituting more than 70% of Earth’s surface. They play a pivotal role in regulating the global climate. Fish are also providing food to billions of people. Generally, they have a lower carbon footprint than land-based animals.