A tiny forest tribe built a DIY drone from YouTube to fight off illegal loggers

http://qz.com/662530/a-tiny-forest-tribe-built-a-diy-drone-from-youtube-to-fight-off-illegal-loggers/

by vezycash • 10 years ago

150 30 10 years ago

howfun• 10 years ago

Very cool!

gressquel• 10 years ago

Amazing. If most of the human race were wiped out by a meteorite then we need more of such engineering minds to get us back to the advanced civilisation we are :)

asdfologist• 10 years ago

Ironically it's also precisely those engineering minds who have built weapons capable of wiping out the human race.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

I don't think that's ironic. I, inspired by Kardashev [1], believe a civilisation's level of technological advancement can be measured by how much energy it controls.

Thus, a civilisation that can control an energy source at a low-power level (e.g. boiling water reactors) can presumably also deploy it at a high-power level (e.g. atomic bombs). If anything, especially as sources become more energetic, control capabilities will be preceded by deployment capability.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

dogma11383• 10 years ago

What exactly is the amazing engineering here? buying an off the shelf toy and using it to film illegal logging?

new299• 10 years ago

TLDR: They're using a drone to take video of the illegal logging.

I'd guess a couple of questions come to mind. The first is, wouldn't satellite imagery identify illegal logging? I guess that might be too expensive?

If those images are not detailed enough, what kind of information do they need, other than where/when logging is taking place.

pjc50• 10 years ago

Registration plates of vehicles involved would be useful, and generally this needs to be taken from an angle rather than above and requires high resolution.

spraak2• 10 years ago

I'd guess that it's better for them to have as much in their hands (literally) as they can. I think that creating a satellite has a much higher entry level, and if they need to pay someone for the images, it may be much harder for them. It also may not offer as real time as they need, whereas they can directly control when and where to fly this drone.

goodcanadian• 10 years ago

Satellite imagery would likely show that it is happening, but it would not provide any evidence as to who is doing it.

substack• 10 years ago

Much of the Amazon basin is covered in clouds most of the time. Landsat 8 doesn't have good coverage.

jjoonathan• 10 years ago

Here's hoping that the government actually does something about the logging."You can't prove it's happening" sounds like more of an excuse than a reason.

I'm sure the tribe has their doubts too, but I wish them luck.

dannypgh3• 10 years ago

Am I the only one who thought this article took a condescending tone by referring to this as "incredible?"

If a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska built a drone following directions on YouTube to monitor land use around him, I don't think this would be seen as incredible.

The difference is a lot of people have very demeaning views of indigenous peoples - they believe they are frozen in time (usually at the time of first contact with white people) and therefore they are surprised to hear that, no, this nation (like any other) is in fact able to use technology.

praveer13• 10 years ago

I think you're looking for something to take offense to without any reason. A tribe from a poor country building these things from videos they saw on internet is certainly more impressive than a 15 year old american kid doing the same. The reason is not that they can't be that capable, the difference is that these people have not been exposed to education, environment, schools, infrastructure, computers etc like a kid from the most developed country in the world. That is what is impressive here. You can't compare the two because of the background they come from, not because they are inferior.

spraak2• 10 years ago

I can definitely see why the GP (er.. I'm not sure if that's correct term here on HN - I mean the post to which my reply is in reply to) would feel that way, and it was almost my own reaction. I appreciate your explanation as to why, looking deeper, that it is actually well framed.

dogma11383• 10 years ago

True; but this isn't some "stone age" tribe from the Amazon that shoots arrows at passing helicopters.

They are exposed to the modern world; even if they don't have access to its amenities all the time.

They understand the concepts of flight, electricity, the internet and modern techonology at large.

The village in question has a facebook page, if you google it you'll see that there are enough results like this one http://www.gy.undp.org/content/guyana/en/home/presscenter/ar... to show that whilst it's fairly undeveloped it's not exactly "backwater".

People in that village seem to have cell phones, internet access, and are not really cut off from the world, the article seem to frame it like they went from sharpening wooden arrows on stones to building drones which they clearly haven't.

So yeah, I don't really see what is so amazing about a few people in a remote village constructing an over the counter drone[0] I would actually be insulted by the fact that I'm expected to be "amazed" by that and I find the entire notion very condescending towards those people.

If you strip down the fluff of the article it almost boils down to "How quaint, look at these savages constructing RC aircraft"....

[0]http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/phantom-fx-61-flying-win...

w8rbt• 10 years ago

Anytime a little guy, who is being treated unfairly, can stand-up to corporations and governments who have far more resources, then that's awesome. I think that's all the article meant to convey.

And skin color does not matter. Every little guy is pulling for all the others.

slv77• 10 years ago

Personally I would find the 15 year old from Nebraska impressive. Especially if they were using it to monitor something like the extent of buffer zones between farmland and streams and rivers to prevent fertilizer runofff. The application is more impressive than the technology.

gjkood• 10 years ago

Sometimes the "incredible" part of the story is getting around all the logistical issues in getting simple things done in a third world country which would be a no brainer in a first world country.

The story talks about tribal people getting access to drones, fabricating them and then maintaining them in the face of shortage of the sophisticated supply chain that we take for granted is accessible to a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska.

It also talks about help from a California based NGO in getting these things off the ground.

Sometimes what we take for granted here as "simple technology" is incredibly hard to source in other parts of the world.

chongli• 10 years ago

The phrase you're looking for is "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Once you start looking for it, you start to see it everywhere. There are entire ideologies built on top of this structure of condescension. It's really insidious!

noonespecial• 10 years ago

Its impressive because they overcame more obstacles to reach the same goal as the 1st worlder who started with more advantages.

A guy digging his own pool with a hand shovel is more impressive than a guy doing it with a backhoe. It doesn't matter who they were to start with. (or how much they knew about pool construction)

oxide• 10 years ago

If a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska built a drone following directions on YouTube to monitor land use around him, I don't think this would be seen as incredible.

You don't say? Quite the astute observation.

Would you say that's because the '15 year old white kid' is more...privileged? :)

dannypgh3• 10 years ago

I note that the "incredible" language is from the URL this article originally pointed to, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-tribe-is-fighting...

And what they were referring to as incredible is that they built the drones following directions on YouTube.

My comment was modded up to +9 or before the link changed, now it's been modded down to +4 or so as my comment lacks it's original context. Not that I care, but it looks like I'm criticizing word choice that TFA isn't using.

xwowsersx• 10 years ago

This is really cool.

I guess it's sort of obvious, but surveilling large areas of land in order to cultivate or manage seems like such a great use case for drones.

dang• 10 years ago

We changed the url from http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-tribe-is-fighting..., which points to this.

Submitters: Please follow the HN guideline that asks you to submit the original when one story points to another. Besides giving credit where due or at least further upstream to the source, the articles tend to get fluffier the further downstream you are.

stefantalpalaru• 10 years ago

built a DIY drone from YouTube

No, they just assembled a chinese kit by watching an instruction video, like every other amateur UAV owner out there.

at-fates-hands• 10 years ago

Wow, it's been a while since I've seen ethnocentrism displayed in such an obvious manner.

The article seems to equate indigenous people with a lack of intelligence for some reason - yet in many of the photos in the article, you clearly see technology they have is current and are able to use it effectively (they have a FB page?).

This really comes across as, "Look at the these rain forest people, isn't it cute they built something with "our" technology?"

A tiny forest tribe built a DIY drone from YouTube to fight off illegal loggers

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