ECE Senior Design students launch innovative technology aimed at reducing vehicular mortality and revitalizing endangered Red Wolves in North Carolina

Today, only about 15-17 reside and roam North Carolina. A nonessential experimental population, Red Wolves are the most endangered wolf population in the world. Follow along as ECE Senior Design students reimagine technology-based systems to combat this issue.

The endangered Red Wolf population is a problem plaguing the North Carolina U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) team. Specifically, it is the overwhelming vehicular mortality rates that are decreasing the longevity of the Red Wolves’ population in North Carolina. In an effort to combat this issue, a senior design project has been tasked with formulating technological advancements to reduce the vehicular mortality of these animals. The senior design course, under the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, engages students in sponsored teamwork projects that eradicate and solve ongoing societal and environmental issues. Students learn about the product life cycle and about development processes utilizing system engineering and project management techniques.With a focus on electrical engineering, each project has a unique design piece that requires time spent in the Troxler Senior Design Center. 

This group consists of four students: Peter Alperi, Adam Eichman, Ethan Lake and Matthew Piwowarski. Collectively, these students received the third generation of this project in hopes of making an advancement towards reducing vehicular mortality for the Red Wolf population. The basis for this project, and reducing the Red Wolf vehicular mortality rate is combated by creating an analytical system that collects data from the wolves geoactivity. From previous senior design groups assigned to this project, there was a created version of a Red Wolf-proof collar that would light up when approaching the road in hopes to spark driver’s awareness, allowing them to slow down and the Red Wolf to pass unharmed. This group decided to create an addition to the collar, by adding solar panels to Red Wolf crossing signs alongside the road. This project connects Blues Notecarrier cards to a Notehub, which acts as a cloud storage space. This space facilitates data routing from the notecard chips that are connecting data in real time. 

There is a Blues Notecard inside the collars that collects the Red Wolf activity directly to the Blues Notehub. This would assist drivers’ visual awareness of the presence of the wolves, by connecting to the wolves collars, lighting up while also sending a signal to the Blues Notehub. 

The goal of this project is not only to reduce the vehicular mortality of the Red Wolf population, but it is to also track and collect their activity overall. The main component to tracking the wolves is the collar. With certain requirements for the collar’s construction, the durability and weight seem to be the main challenges. The collar must be below four percent of the wolves body weight while also being water proof, bite proof but chargeable via solar panels. “Creating a system with the required functionality, while ensuring it draws less power than the small amount of energy the collar can produce, has proven to be challenging,” explained electrical engineering senior, Adam Eichman. Additionally, the power source for the collars is the sun, and the Red Wolf population likes to spend a lot of time under tree cover. 

While they are not an official sponsor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been a mentor for this group, “The Fish and Wildlife Service has been an amazing source of information regarding where the Red Wolves spend their time allowing us to understand the environment our collar needs to survive in,” as Lake noted. The current collar system created is only trackable by the USFWS. They use VHS transmitters to track the Red Wolves, which is very labor intensive. 

The future of this project is dependent on making strides with sustainable collar materials, while also working effectively alongside the USFWS. “The future goal of this project is to implement our design to make a significant contribution to the revitalization of the Red Wolf population,” described Eichman. “We hope that once we complete our design, future teams can build upon it by adding more functionality, improving system efficiency, and conducting extensive testing.” This project has the potential to play a key role in rehabilitating the Red Wolf population while combating vehicular mortality.