Lian Pin Koh: A drone's-eye view of conservation

When we think of Nepal,

we tend to think of the snow-capped mountains

of the Himalayas,

the crystal-clear still waters of its alpine lakes,

or the huge expanse of its grasslands.

What some of us may not realize

is that in the Himalayan foothills,

where the climate is much warmer

and the landscape much greener,

there lives a great diversity of wildlife,

including the one-horned rhinoceros,

the Asian elephant

and the Bengal tiger.

But unfortunately, these animals

are under constant threat from poachers

who hunt and kill them for their body parts.

To stop the killing of these animals,

battalions of soldiers and rangers

are sent to protect Nepal's national parks,

but that is not an easy task,

because these soldiers have to patrol

thousands of hectares of forests on foot

or elephant backs.

It is also risky for these soldiers

when they get into gunfights with poachers,

and therefore Nepal is always looking

for new ways to help with protecting the forests

and wildlife.

Well recently, Nepal acquired a new tool

in the fight against wildlife crime,

and these are drones,

or more specifically, conservation drones.

For about a year now, my colleagues and I

have been building drones for Nepal

and training the park protection personnel

on the use of these drones.

Not only does a drone give you

a bird's-eye view of the landscape,

but it also allows you to capture detailed,

high-resolution images of objects on the ground.

This, for example, is a pair of rhinoceros

taking a cooling bath on a hot summer day

in the lowlands of Nepal.

Now we believe that drones have

tremendous potential,

not only for combating wildlife crime,

but also for monitoring the health

of these wildlife populations.

So what is a drone?

Well, the kind of drone I'm talking about

is simply a model aircraft

fitted with an autopilot system,

and this autopilot unit contains a tiny computer,

a GPS, a compass, a barometric altimeter

and a few other sensors.

Now a drone like this

is meant to carry a useful payload,

such as a video camera

or a photographic camera.

It also requires a software that allows the user

to program a mission,

to tell the drone where to go.

Now people I talk to are often surprised

when they hear that these are the only

four components that make a conservation drone,

but they are even more surprised

when I tell them how affordable these components are.

The facts is, a conservation drone

doesn't cost very much more than

a good laptop computer

or a decent pair of binoculars.

So now that you've built your own conservation drone,

you probably want to go fly it,

but how does one fly a drone?

Well, actually, you don't,

because the drone flies itself.

All you have to do is to program a mission

to tell the drone where to fly.

But you simply do that by clicking on

a few way points on the Google Maps interface

using the open-source software.

Those missions could be as simple

as just a few way points,

or they could be slightly longer and more complicated,

to fly along a river system.

Sometimes, we fly the drone in a lawnmower-type pattern

and take pictures of that area,

and those pictures can be processed

to produce a map of that forest.

Other researchers might want to fly the drone

along the boundaries of a forest

to watch out for poachers or people

who might be trying to enter the forest illegally.

Now whatever your mission is,

once you've programmed it,

you simply upload it to the autopilot system,

bring your drone to the field,

and launch it simply by tossing it in the air.

And often we'll go about this mission

taking pictures or videos along the way,

and usually at that point,

we will go grab ourselves a cup of coffee,

sit back, and relax for the next few minutes,

although some of us sit back and panic for the next few minutes

worrying that the drone will not return.

Usually it does, and when it does,

it even lands automatically.

So what can we do with a conservation drone?

Well, when we built our first prototype drone,

our main objective was to fly it over

a remote rainforest in North Sumatra, Indonesia,

to look for the nest of a species of great ape

known as the orangutan.

The reason we wanted to do that was because

we needed to know how many individuals

of this species are still left in that forest.

Now the traditional method of surveying

for orangutans is to walk the forest on foot

carrying heavy equipment

and to use a pair of binoculars to look up in the treetops

where you might find an orangutan or its nest.

Now as you can imagine,

that is a very time-consuming, labor-intensive,

and costly process,

so we were hoping that drones

could significantly reduce the cost of surveying

for orangutan populations in Indonesia

and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

So we were very excited when we captured

our first pair of orangutan nests on camera.

And this is it; this is the first ever picture

of orangutan nests taken with a drone.

Since then we have taken pictures

of dozens of these nests

from around various parts of Southeast Asia,

and we're now working with computer scientists

to develop algorithms that can automatically count

the number of nests from the thousands

of photos we've collected so far.

But nests are not the only objects

these drones can detect.

This is a wild orangutan

happily feeding on top of a palm tree,

seemingly oblivious to our drone that was flying overhead,

not once but several times.

We've also taken pictures of other animals

including forest buffalos in Gabon,

elephants, and even turtle nests.

But besides taking pictures of just the animals themselves,

we also take pictures of the habitats these animals live in,

because we want to keep track

of the health of these habitats.

Sometimes, we zoom out a little

and look at other things that might be happening

in the landscape.

This is an oil palm plantation in Sumatra.

Now oil palm is a major driver of deforestation

in that part of the world,

so we wanted to use this new drone technology

to keep track of the spread of these plantations

in Southeast Asia.

But drones could also be used to keep track of

illegal logging activities.

This is a recently logged forest,

again in Sumatra.

You could even still see the processed

wooden planks left on the ground.

But perhaps the most exciting part

about taking pictures from the air is

we could later stitch these pictures together

using special software to create a map

of the entire landscape, and this map

gives us crucial information

for monitoring land use change,

to let us know where and when plantations might be expanding,

where forests might be contracting,

or where fires might be breaking out.

Aerial images could also be processed

to produce three-dimensional

computer models of forests.

Now these models are not just visually appealing,

but they are also geometrically accurate,

which means researchers can now measure

the distance between trees,

calculate surface area, the volume of vegetation,

and so on, all of which are important information

for monitoring the health of these forests.

Recently, we've also begun experimenting

with thermal imaging cameras.

Now these cameras can detect

heat-emitting objects from the ground,

and therefore they are very useful for detecting poachers or their campfires at night.

So I've told you quite a lot about

what conservation drones are,

how you might operate one of these drones,

and what a drone could do for you.

I will now tell you where conservation drones

are being used around the world.

We built our first prototype drones in Switzerland.

We brought a few of these to Indonesia

for the first few test flights.

Since then, we've been building drones

for our collaborators from around the world,

and these include fellow biologists

and partners from major conservation organizations.

Perhaps the best and most rewarding part

about working with these collaborators

is the feedback they give us

on how to improve our drones.

Building drones for us is

a constant work in progress.

We are constantly trying to improve them in terms of

their range, their ruggedness,

and the amount of payload they can carry.

We also work with collaborators

to discover new ways of using these drones.

For example, camera traps are a common tool

used by biologists to take pictures of shy animals

hiding in the forests,

but these are motion-activated cameras,

so they snap a picture every time an animal

crosses their path.

But the problem with camera traps

is that the researcher has to go back to the forest

every so often to retrieve those images,

and that takes a lot of time,

especially if there are dozens

or hundreds of these cameras placed in the forest.

Now a drone could be designed to perform the task

much more efficiently.

This drone, carrying a special sensor,

could be flown over the forest

and remotely download these images

from wi-fi–enabled cameras.

Radio collars are another tool

that's commonly used by biologists.

Now these collars are put onto animals.

They transmit a radio signal which allows

the researcher to track the movements of these animals across the landscape.

But the traditional way of tracking animals

is pretty ridiculous,

because it requires the researcher to be walking

on the ground carrying a huge and cumbersome radio antenna,

not unlike those old TV antennae we used to have

on our rooftops. Some of us still do.

A drone could be used to do the same job

much more efficiently.

Why not equip a drone

with a scanning radio receiver,

fly that over the forest canopy

in a certain pattern

which would allow the user or the operator

to triangulate the location

of these radio-collared animals remotely

without having to step foot in the forest.

A third and perhaps most exciting way

of using these drones

is to fly them to a really remote,

never-explored-before rainforest

somewhere hidden in the tropics,

and parachute down a tiny spy microphone

that would allow us to eavesdrop on the calls

of mammals, birds, amphibians,

the Yeti, the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, whatever.

That would give us biologists

a pretty good idea of what animals

might be living in those forests.

And finally, I would like to show you

the latest version of our conservation drone.

The MAJA drone has a wingspan

of about two meters.

It weighs only about two kilograms,

but it can carry half its weight.

It is a fully autonomous system.

During its mission, it can even transmit

a live video feed back to a ground station laptop,

which allows the user

to see what the drone is seeing in real time.

It carries a variety of sensors,

and the photo quality of some of these sensors

can be as high as one to two centimeters per pixel.

This drone can stay in the air for 40 to 60 minutes,

which gives it a range of up to 50 kilometers.

That is quite sufficient for most

of our conservation applications.

Now, conservation drones began as

a crazy idea from two biologists

who are just deeply passionate about this technology.

And we believe, strongly believe,

that drones can and will be a game changer

for conservation research and applications.

We've had our fair share of skeptics and critics

who thought that we were just fooling around with toy planes.

And in a way, they are right.

I mean, let's be honest,

drones are the ultimate toys for boys.

But at the same time, we've also gotten to know

many wonderful colleagues and collaborators

who share our vision

and see the potential of conservation drones.

To us, it is obvious that conservation biologists

and practitioners should make full use

of every available tool, including drones,

in our fight to save the last remaining forests

and wildlife of this planet.

Thank you.

(Applause)