How Flying Robots Might Prevent Illegal activities happening in the Forest - Summary Analysis Draft #2

MEC1281

Summary Analysis

Draft #1 

By Alexander Quah

1st Feb 2021

According to the article “The Flying Robot Might Prevent Deforestation” (Peck,2012), flying drones are key in acting as a lookout to prevent and stop illegal activities in a forest. Illegal deforestation and fires were one of the events affecting the rainforest in Brazil. The article suggests that drug trafficking and mining were also made to be easier due to low-level surveillance in the rainforest. The article proposes the use of Quadrotor drones to navigate through the rainforests, acting as a lookout for illegal activities that are happening. The article underlined the fact that Quadrotor drones in 2012 were capable to fly from side to side, avoid obstacles and even learn and adapt to changes on the go. Additionally, quadrotor drones are able to sense the environment without direct connection to other drones. The goal of this project is to reduce or stop illegal activities. 

However, the author did not provide enough evidence to support the usage of Quadcopter drones being sufficient in stopping the illegal activities happening in the forest as it has many limitations to the systems that were not stated in Peck's article.

Quadcopter drones are limited to only being the eyes of the forests, and nothing more. They are currently deployed in real-time in the world's rainforests at the moment.  Drones were donated by the WWF to organizations in a project to protect the Amazon rainforest (Pfeifer, 2020). They are currently on patrol to monitor illegal deforestation and forest fires. Illegal deforestation was captured in the Amazon by the drone on the first day of deployment alone. However, it was stated in the article by Pfeifer that all the patrol team could do was to pick up the footage and monitor the situation. The drones did not pose a threat to the illegal activists and continued with the activity and the deed was completed before the arrival of law enforcement. Humans are the only people that can stop this from happening, but it is affected by the corruption in the private sector and in the government that was made possible in the inadequate and flawed policy and legal framework (fao, 2020). Thus, even though it acts as a good pair of eyes for the stopping of some illegal activities such as illegal deforestation, it is insufficient to prevent the activity from happening.

Quadcopter drones are unable to fully capture nocturnal activities. One of the upgrades to drones over the years to allow it to capture images at night are the function of thermal imaging. It was designed to easily capture the heat signature of mammals as well as equipment that emit heat, such as vehicles for transportation. This function is very effective in the tracking of human activities in areas where drones are able to fly with ease. However, it will be difficult to manoeuvre in the jungle region in the dark, where there are many obstacles and hurdles in the way of the drones flight path. Trees and vines are undetectable by the thermal imaging as they do not emit as much heat for it to be distinguished properly by the thermal sensing camera, similarly to flying blind. Currently, drones are not built and designed to withstand the flight over deep forests or at night, preventing it from tracking the illegal activist throughout their journey (Globalconversation, 2020). 

Humans mind and body are built to adapt to the environment. "The evolution of the brain is the most obvious example of how we evolve to adapt" (Massey, 2013).  Humans have adapted so much that it allowed us to live in different environment and climates. The same adapting ability goes to the illegal activists as well. The moment we find a way to hinder their work, the more they will learn to adapt to the changes. Once they find that drones of an opposition that are making things more difficult for them, they would learn to adapt to the changes to avoid, counter or even disarm the opposing drones. Drones are readily obtainable in the moment of 2021, and modified drones could even be used by the illegal activists as well to counter the existing drones in the market. 

In-conclusion, drones will be a good way to start reducing illegal activities, but more work must be put into the design of the drones and the structure of the opposing organizations to prevent illegal activities from happening.

References

BBC Earth. (2020). Human adaptation to their environment. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=eb15693c3dcc421a8c117b7657b7736e

Dronefly (2020). Firefighting drone infographic. https://www.dronefly.com/firefighting-drones-drones-in-the-field-infographic

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations International Tropical Timber Organization,  Forestry paper 145. (2020). Illegal activities in the Forest and their root causes. http://www.fao.org/3/a0146e/A0146E06.htm

Global Conservation. (2021). UAV drones becoming valuable tools in fighting illegal deforestation in global conservation projects. https://globalconservation.org/news/uav-drones-becoming-valuable-tools-fighting-illegal-deforestatio/

Jones, J. (2018). 10 Largest Forests in the World. https://largest.org/nature/forests/

Lumen Learning. (2020). Human Adaptations. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapter/human-adaptations/#:~:text=Humans%20have%20biological%20plasticity%2C%20or,a%20population%20with%20its%20environment.

Massey, N. (2013). Humans may be the most adaptive species. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-may-be-most-adaptive-species/

Peck, M. (2012). How Flying Robots Might Prevent Deforestation. http//:mashable.com/2012/03/20/flying-robots-deforestation/

Pfeifer, H. (2020). Amazon tribes are using drones to track deforestation in Brazilian rainforest. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/01/americas/amazon-drones-brazil-deforestation-cte-spc-intl/index.html

Schaft, P. (2018). Firefighting Drones Aim to Fly Higher, Help save Lives. https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/unmanned/firefighting-drones-aim-to-fly-higher-save-lives/