Capstone 2019 Highlight: Box Turtle Tracker
Department: Computer Science
Team: Amy Brick, Kari Chamberlain, Christine Reed
Adviser: Vojislav Kecman, Ph.D.
Sponsor: Box Turtle Sanctuary of Central Virginia

Eastern box turtles, which regularly live to be as old as 100, have an almost unbreakable connection to their individual habitat. If their habitat is disturbed or they are removed from it, these turtles will often wander aimlessly trying to find their original home until they die.

The Box Turtle Sanctuary of Central Virginia is a nonprofit organization that rehabilitates and provides a new, nurturing environment for box turtles that are injured, displaced or lost from the area where they grew up. Keeping accurate, organized records of all the turtles and monitoring their location across the sprawling rural Hanover County sanctuary is crucial — and challenging.

This team is designing an innovative way to track box turtles. They have created novel mobile application for Android devices allows a user to upload a picture of a turtle along with a name. The app extracts GPS location from the images in order to plot the turtle’s location and date on a map. Users can continue to access a turtle’s record history and previous locations by accessing its profile.

Visitors to the April 26, 2019, Capstone Design Expo will see a live demonstration and interact with the application using images of real turtles in and around the sanctuary. They will also learn about turtle conservation efforts.