Innovate UK has given a £220k grant to Yorkshire agriculture tech specialist, AgriSound.
The investment is to develop world-first fully automated acoustic landscape monitoring technology.
The York-based company said it was close to launching the system, which it believes will revolutionise biodiversity monitoring.
“Our new acoustic monitoring system is the first solution to offer fully automated, maintenance-free landscape monitoring at scale, giving industries and landowners access to more accurate, timely, and comprehensive biodiversity data,” explained Casey Woodward, CEO and co-founder of AgriSound.
“This will allow for improved compliance with government policies and offer key insights to manage land sustainably.
“AgriSound’s innovative solution promises to deliver low-cost, holistic biodiversity monitoring and actionable insights for industries, developers, and farmers, as they continue to scale up their efforts to safeguard the environment while meeting stringent regulatory requirements.”
The company will work with Baker Consultants, a UK ecological consultancy, and Crop Innovations, a charity driving agricultural diversification.
It builds on AgriSounds’s existing insect monitoring system, Polly, to offer an even broader range of insight, using audio analysis algorithms and cloud-based AI.
“We are anticipating that the new system will greatly expand our capabilities to rapidly generate biodiversity information, and make this available in real-time across a landscape-scale array of sensors,” stated Dr Carlos Abrahams, Director of Ecoacoustics at Baker Consultants.
“This automation of data collection goes beyond, but complements, what we can achieve through manual field surveys, ensuring that ecological methods keep pace with technological advancements – and offering clients more detailed data at a lower cost.”
Organisations currently using AgriSounds’ Polly to monitor biodiversity include Tesco, M&S, Innocent Drinks and AB InBev.
