Zurich/Birmensdorf ZH – The ETH BiodivX team, led by ETH and WSL, is one of the finalists in the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest Competition. It explores biodiversity with drones and rovers. The competition is endowed with 10 million dollars.
XPRIZE, which says it is the world's leading provider of competitions to solve humanity's grand challenges, announced July 24 at the International Congress for Conservation Biology 2023 in Rwanda that Team ETH BiodivX has reached the final round of the XPRIZE Rainforest Competition. The researchers, led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), are thus competing with five other finalists from Brazil, Spain and the USA for victory and prize money totaling $10 million. The competition is sponsored by the Brazilian family foundation Alana Foundation.
The five-year-old Rainforest Competition was launched in 2019 with nearly 300 teams. It aims to help accelerate innovation around autonomous technologies that can collect data on biodiversity in rainforests. In total, 56 people from 15 countries contributed to the ETH BiodivX team, including the three ETH spin-offs Restor, Diaxxio and Simplex DNA, according to an ETH report. "We collect large amounts of eDNA, images and sounds through autonomous drones and rovers," the team explains on its website, "and analyze the data through a live dashboard, advanced AI algorithms and a global community of indigenous citizen scientists."
The semifinals took place in June 2023 in the rainforest of Singapore. The task was to detect as many plant and animal species as possible on 100 hectares within 24 hours without entering the area. Another 48 hours were available to analyze the data. The Swiss team produced 12 million DNA sequences and identified a total of 257 animal and plant species. His report ran to more than 70 pages. The young researchers had practiced the mission in the Masoala Rainforest of the Zurich Zoo. They recorded their work in a video.
The final will take place next year. ETH professor Kristy Deiner said the team looks forward to developing its technologies between now and then. ce/mm/Café Europe