San Francisco - Topher White came to the forest in Indonesia in 2011. He was surprised when one day, vaguely heard the sound of a tree cut down carelessly by the illegal loggers.
But no one acted because the sound was disguised by many other sounds that were repeated in the woods. So the idea came to the head of this man from the United States, to make technology for illegal logging detection.
He installed some phones in the forest. Each phone is protected with plastic and powered by a tiny solar panel. High-sensitivity microphones record sounds in the forest, which are sent to the cloud for analysis.
If a chainsaw sound is detected, it will be instantly sent a message or email to the local authority. This method turned out to be quite effective and there are already illegal loggers caught. Topher also founded a nonprofit Rainforest Connection to promote the business.
Rainforest Connection then makes the device even more powerful thanks to tool machine learning from Google that can be used for free. His name is TensorFlow.
TensorFlow can analyze voice data in real time and accurately distinguish sounds related to illegal logging such as saws, trucks and more. Initially, the sound is detected limited for example only saws only.
In addition, the existing system is overwhelmed because various sounds rained for 24 hours so there is the possibility of illegal logging undetected voice. Well, TensorFlow becomes the solution.
"TensorFlow is able to analyze every layer of our data.Audio detection can be improved," Topher said at the Google I / O 2018 event in Mountain View, United States.
Machine learning can be applied in several scenarios. For example detecting animals like Jaguar, no need to listen directly to his voice.
"We should be able to detect animals that do not make sounds, Jaguars do not always sound, but the animals around them are like birds and others are voicing, maybe they can be more easily detected from the bird's voice," he said.
Rainforest Connection developed device that is now equipped with TensorFlow technology can detect the sound of chainsaws up to 1 kilometer. Now, the technology is used in the Amazon forest, in Kalimantan and Sumatra.
Topher seeks to get many people involved in the effort to save the rainforest, including the students. He organized workshops in schools where students made the device, which would later be distributed to the forest.
There is also an application to listen to the sound in real time from the forest. Topher and his organization are also open to receiving funding from anyone who cares about the future of the earth.
"Oh, and I will soon visit Indonesia again," he said, with the aim of forest in the Aceh region.