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Google Gives $5 Million to Drone Program That Will Track Poachers
- ComputerGuru 14y agoThis is old news, already heavily discussed ~2 months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935623
- product50 14y agoIt was the featured article in Reddit Today I Learned subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/ Probably the author just got the idea from there and shared it here.
- qompiler 14y agoGood idea! Lets make the Africans who manually track poachers jobless!
- smackay 14y agoHave you seen some of the types of terrain involved. Doing it manually is like two needles looking for each other in a haystack. You'll still need boots on the ground once the poachers have been found and with increased success it's just possible that more guards would be employed if the system was effective and was able to attract more funding as a result.
- dools 14y agoThis assumes that if you free up the time of people currently tracking poachers manually by walking around in the fields, for free, then there will be nothing else for them to do (which I doubt is the case)
- fijal 14y agoHave you been to the kruger park? Do you have any idea how big it is? It's impossible to cover such areas on foot and poachers can move even by helicopters. Also if it continues like that, we'll be out of rhinos at some point soon, so no guards at all (and no tourists either)
- qompiler 14y agoSo use helicopters aswell?
- EtienneK 14y agoI'm sorry, but this comment is extremely ignorant on what's busy going on here in South Africa. The poaching syndicates are all armed with automatic rifles. The park rangers aren't trained to deal with threats like these. Our government has started deploying army troops, but the Kruger Park is so huge that it doesn't help much. Any help, whether human or robotic, is desperately needed.
- EvilTerran 14y agoLuddite.
- EvilTerran 14y ago... maybe I should have elaborated that a bit. The original Luddites opposed technological advancement solely on the grounds that it would put people out of jobs. It's my impression that the modern consensus is that their stance was woefully misguided. However, it's precisely the same attitude that qompiler presented in the comment I was replying to.
- Tyrant505 14y agoI wish I had enough "Karma" to downvote you.
- pbateman 14y agoGreat point! Perhaps we should also hobble the Africans who manually track poachers so we create twice as many jobs!
- nodata 14y agoYeah! Maybe we could take away their transport too and create extra jobs!
- tiziano88 14y agoagain?
- rikacomet 14y agoThere is one worry that I have: In this age, where hacking is so dominant, and not even the most secure places are completely secure. I don't reckon that these drones would have same level of cyber security, as military drones have, and even those were vulnerable (remember how Iran got one). So, if the poachers hire a exploit of this system, the animals would not be able to exercise their natural defense, i.e currently, poachers depend on a lot of tracking maneuvers, but still they don't know where the animal is actually. If by chance, they get someone skilled to hack the drone system's communication system only, (and they can afford it, given how big this whole thing is) , they can poach with point-blank accuracy :( I hope, google would provide them not just a secure system, but, also one that they can't profitably exploit through a hacker.