WildLife Companion

Connecting Hearts to Wildlife: Your Personal Journey of Conservation

Comment

Introduction

Welcome to WildLife Companion: Bridging Connections for Endangered Birds. Our project is born out of a deep concern – the unequal allocation of resources for threatened species. The disparities in conservation efforts have spurred us to create a meaningful link between people and endangered animals, focusing specifically on avian species.

Purpose and Motivation

The inspiration for our project, WildLife Companion, arises from a pressing concern - the uneven distribution of funds for endangered species. The conservation efforts for these species are often imbalanced, with "cute" animals receiving more attention and funding, while other equally important species are left without adequate support. For instance, birds, despite being an essential part of our ecosystem, often receive less attention and resources compared to mammals. This disparity has motivated us to bridge the gap and create a meaningful connection between people and endangered animals, specifically focusing on birds.

Our motivation comes from the desire to make a real difference in wildlife conservation by making birds more captivating and engaging to the general public. We recognize the need to change the perception of certain species and inspire a sense of responsibility and empathy towards them. By developing a solution that offers a personal connection with these animals, we aim to attract wider support and encourage individuals to contribute to their conservation

Unveiling the Application's Functionality

WildLife Companion revolutionizes connecting with and supporting endangered species, focusing on birds. Our innovative approach transforms animal adoption into an immersive experience.

Our application offers a multifaceted experience:

Real-time Engagement: Personalized social feed offers AI-generated updates on adopted bird's movements, behaviors, and interactions, creating an intimate connection with their daily life.

Interactive Mapping: Visualize bird's location and migratory patterns on a map, revealing its recent travel route and historical movements.

In-depth Insights: Chatbot provides detailed species information, answers questions about migration, nesting, and more, enriching user knowledge.

Empowering Conservation: Adopters contribute to conservation efforts through a portion of their subscription, aiding habitat protection, research, and community engagement.

Charting the Development Path

Production Architecture

The architectural diagram in the above media file provides an overview of the proposed system design for a production application, highlighting key components and interactions that ensure reliability and scalability.

Tech Stack

Frontend : UX Design created using Figma, React Framework (implemented core functionality, such as the social feed, map display, and chatbot).

Backend : We utilized Leaflet.js, a popular JavaScript library, to develop a basic map interface on the frontend. Complementing this, a serverless backend was established using AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions. Through HTTP requests initiated from the frontend, randomized coordinates were created by function and displayed on the map, simulating the animal's location within its habitat. Future production plans envision enhanced functionality, like tracking the animal's 24-hour travel route, movements, weather with the help of the data gathered from the AI tagger attached on the animal, although this advanced feature won't be incorporated in our demo version.

Chatbot : The chatbot built using IBM Watson serves as an interactive and informative tool for users to engage with the adopted animals.

In-depth information on the above implementation can be found in this file (documentation)

AI Tagger (Hardware Design)

The design and technical aspects along with the communication flow are mentioned in detail in this file (documentation)

How to use WildLife Companion is a breeze:

  • Adoption: Choose an endangered bird species to adopt.
  • Engage: Explore your bird's daily life on the social feed in the home page.
  • Explore: Track its migration history on the interactive map.
  • Learn: Interact with the chatbot for species insights.
  • Subscription: You can adopt new species by navigating to the Adopt page and paying the subscription fee.
  • Profile: Gives user insights on the number of adoptions, the adopted species and the conservation rank.

Challenges we ran into

  • Generating and displaying meaningful mock data for engaging AI-generated updates on the homepage.
  • Designing a non-intrusive hardware prototype for the AI-powered tagger while integrating diverse components.
  • Creating a human-like chatbot capable of answering user queries about animal details and conservation efforts.

Go-to-Market Strategy

WildLife Companion's introduction to the public will be orchestrated through a collaborative alliance with a prominent wildlife fund or nature charity. This strategic partnership entails a comprehensive program that seamlessly integrates on-ground conservationists who will actively tag the animals. The application's accessibility hinges on a well-defined subscription model, wherein consumers pledge a monthly contribution as part of "adopting" their selected animal. In return for their support, these adopters gain exclusive access to the WildLife Companion application. This synergy between conservationists, the charitable organization, and engaged subscribers ensures a sustainable and scalable strategy.

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history