Camera Mount Project
One of my main projects was modifying a mount for an anti-poaching thermal camera system currently used in Kenya. The system consists of a FLIR thermal camera with a protective casing and mount that was designed by WWF Conservation Engineer, Eric Becker. Currently, two of these cameras are used in a protected area in Kenya to look for poachers at night. As the sun sets, at least three teams of rangers will set out on patrol. One team of rangers will have the camera with them and drive to a high-risk area where they will park until morning. After parking, the team will attach the camera to their vehicles and scan for threats. If the rangers see a potential threat, they use their radios to alert and direct the other ranger teams to apprehend the poacher. After the patrol, the rangers remove the camera from their vehicle and store it in a weather-proof case. The use of just these two cameras has already resulted in 300 arrests.
To address a sticking issue on the mount, I did research in 2 main areas: how materials attach to each other and low friction materials. I looked at camera sliders, legos, rack and pinion systems, and linear slides. To better understand low-friction materials, I read about the properties of PTFE (used to make the Teflon non-stick coating on pans), Acetal, and other plastics. After doing this research, I created my design criteria, which were standards the design had to meet.
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After I made the design criteria, I then brainstormed! I generated 22 ideas on how to connect the camera to the rangers' cars. The ideas ranged from adding cutouts or slots to adding buckles like you see on a backpack. This project was particularly interesting, as the design solution had to address the sticking problem but also be put together easily and quickly in the dark.
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I refined the ideas through Pugh Screening matrices, and one of the designs with the highest scores was to make as much as possible out of low-friction plastic. This design was selected because it was the only design that did not require any modifications (ie adding slots or drilling additional holes) to be made to the camera plate. To keep the camera plate part of the design the same, the rails that the camera slides into became plastic, while the camera plate remained metal. To further reduce friction, cutouts were added to the rails.
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What I really contributed to the design were cutouts in the existing rails and protective cover plates. Additionally, I created a hole pattern of the plate that the rangers will weld to their vehicles.
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The CAD designs were created using Autodesk Fusion 360, which is a free software available for both Mac and PC. Using the Manufacture function of Fusion 360, I was able to add tool paths, showing how the raw materials should be cut to result in the parts shown above.
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The next steps for this project are to assemble and test a prototype of the newest design. The camera mount system will then be finalized, and 15 of the new camera systems will be sent to 8 protected areas across Kenya this Fall.
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To learn more about this project, please see this case study about it from WildLabs: https://www.wildlabs.net/resources/case-studies/designing-camera-mount-flir-and-wwf
Sniffer Dog Project
A second project I contributed to this summer was aimed at stopping the pipeline of wildlife goods from protected areas to markets. One component of this pipeline is shipping containers. While shipping containers entering the US are scanned for radioactive material, no other scanning or inspection is required that would detect materials like ivory or shark fin. Where there are devices capable of scanning for these products, they are extremely expensive. However, specially trained "sniffer" dogs can also search for these items, and may be a more economical solution.
My goal for this summer was to help create a device that would remove air samples from the shipping containers in such a way that the samples could be presented to trained sniffer dogs for inspection without degrading or becoming contaminated.
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To accomplish this, there were a host of questions about shipping containers, how air settles in shipping containers, and the capabilities of the sniffer dogs that needed to be answered before design could begin.
These included:
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What compounds or vapors are coming off of the wildlife products and being released into the container?
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Where does vapor settle in the container?
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How do temperature and humidity affect sample collection?
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What is the minimum sample mass needed for dogs to detect the target compounds?
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Which filter materials and thicknesses trap the most compounds?
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To answers these questions, I did a thorough literature review, looking at analogous solutions, such as the RASCO system, and reading journal articles about drug sniffing and cadaver dogs.
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Through this research, I found that humidity and low temperatures decrease success. I also learned that when air is being sucked out of a shipping container, there is a very fast moving vortex air farther away from where the air is being removed, and that air moves more slowly in the area it is being removed from. Additionally, I found that closer woven filters, trap more compounds than loser woven materials and that. the chemical makeup of the filter material impacted its ability to trap compounds.
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Based on my research, I developed recommendations for devices that should be used to collect air sample from containers. This was based on the CFM, water lift, and air watt values that moved the air in the shipping container fast enough to disturb settled compounds but not too fast that the air would pass through the filter before compounds could bind to it.
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Additionally, I developed a list of filter materials that should be tested to determine which interact the best with the compounds we are looking for and brainstormed ways to attach/remove the filters to the collection system without contaminating them. These brainstormed ideas can be seen in the gallery below,
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