Design Summary & Analysis Draft 1

   The article “How Flying Robots Might Prevent Deforestation” (Peck, 2012) mentioned the purpose, features and effectiveness of quadrotors, mainly focused on them being “sentinels of crucial environmental protection”. These “miniature flying robots” were programmed to inspect the surroundings of the rainforest independently, providing advanced feedback for unlicensed activities and largely diminishing the desire of those people who considered carrying out unlawful acts such as "cutting down trees and drug trafficking". According to Peck, Vijay Kumar, the developer of the Quadrotors, highlighted the robots’ ability to efficiently function together as a team without a need for any communication. Furthermore, quadrotors were equipped with “little rotor blades'' for easy gliding action, and the programmed commands on the “onboard processor” would call for immediate response to any difference in their surroundings. According to Peck, Mario Campos, a professor of computer science, claimed that although quadrotors were deemed as valuable bots, we have to be mindful when utilising these robots extensively as there could be a possibility of them endangering the wildlife.

Flying Robots are useful in guarding the forest against deforestation and people who use the forest as a disguise to do illegal activities. However, more analyses need to be done to understand the impact that the flying robots bring to the ecosystem that they are safeguarding.

One of the benefits of using drones in the forest is to enable us to have a greater understanding of the terrain of the forest. This is done by flying the drones through the forest to scan and capture the different features of the forest. Next, the software will generate the 3D map of the forest based on the information collected by the flying robots. An instance of the usage of the 3D map will be planting of mangrove trees in Myanmar. According to the article "Drones in Forestry: How are UAVs making a difference?" (Jackson, 2020), a non-profit organisation called Worldview International was only able to plant less than "three square miles of mangrove saplings" prior to the adoption of drones. Currently, the organisation's target is to be able to plant 400,000 trees per day with the assistance of drones. As a result of an increased in the knowledge of the forest, the stakeholders, such as the government, researchers and organisations can have an easier time for forest planning and conservation.

Another advantage of employing drones in the forest is for detecting early forest fire. According to the article "The Amazon is being decimated. How could tech have prevented it?" (Gan, 2019), many forests in the world are burning. Gan mention that the Amazon Rainforest had burned for more than three weeks which caused damage to the habitat of "10% of the world’s animal and plant species". Likewise, forest fire in many other places such as Canary Island, Siberia and Alaska also caused large scale destruction to the forests. Hence, early detection of forest fire using flying robots is extremely important to prevent a small fire from spreading into a large scale forest fire which can cause irreversible damage to the forest.

In conclusion, the overall impact of deploying flying robots in the forest is positive as they not only help to prevent the loss of habitat for animals, plants and people but also help the forest to regrow.

            References: 

            Gan, J. (2019, August 28). The Amazon is being decimated. How could tech have prevented it? AgFunderNews. https://agfundernews.com/the-amazon-is-being-decimated-how-could-tech-have-prevented-it.html

            Jackson, B. (2020, October 13). Drones in Forestry: How are UAVs making a difference? COPTRZ. https://www.coptrz.com/drones-in-forestry/

            Peck, M. (2016, July 14). How Flying Robots Might Prevent Deforestation. Mashable. https://mashable.com/2012/03/20/flying-robots-deforestation/