ANIMO: WildLife Priority Mode

Every year, 2 billion wild animals become victims of roadkill. For reference, approximately 1 million humans die in traffic accidents each year. Roadkill has become a significant cause of death and even extinction of various species. These animals, following their natural instincts, traverse roads, oblivious to the concept of vehicles and the dangers they pose. As human expansion continues, the conflict between wildlife habitats and human development intensifies, often with tragic consequences.

With the development of self-driving cars such as WAYMO, computer vision and AI could detect the crossing animals more quickly and react to avoid collisions. While we talk about the morality of self-driving cars, we talk about passenger priority mode or pedestrian priority mode. Can we have a wild-life priority mode with the goal of recognizing wild animals and reducing collisions on them?

I have been documenting photos of roadkill animals. It shocks me how flat they are after wheels and wheels over them. Some of them have embossed into the road, flattened like a carpet. This exhibition features carpets created from the images of these roadkill animals. A sweeping robot, an autonomous vehicle in its own right, navigates among these dead animal carpets, cleaning up the blood of these incidents.