Aye Aye Sleep Monitoring

Baby aye-aye courtesy of SD Zoo Wildlife Alliance

One challenge in caring for animals is being able to monitor the animal’s behavior, even when caretakers are not on duty. This is especially challenging in nocturnal species such as the aye-aye, particularly when they are in environments with significant anthropogenic stimuli, such as at the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park.

We want to develop a system for intelligently monitoring animals 24/7 so that scientists and caretakers can easily locate the relevant and interesting data instead of poring over hours of irrelevant data. This takes on several aspects – reliable long-life embedded sensor networks, big data management, and machine learning.

On-Box Sensor Unit

If you have any of the following skillsets and are interested in this project, please reach out to our staff engineer Nathan Hui (nthui@ucsd.edu)

• Linux systemd
• Networking
• Python and multithreading
• Digital camera/lighting/optics
• 3D Printing
• Test and evaluation
• Systems engineering