Brazil: Gadget Will Protect Amazon Forest

It’s called “Curupira,” like the protagonist of Brazilian legends, but it has a much more specific goal: to expose illegal logging in the Amazon.

This device was created by a group of students from the State University of Amazonas in Brazil. In folklore, Curupira is the “guardian of the forest,” a creature of indeterminate age and height that lives in the Amazon forests and has feet that are turned backwards. As a result, his prey, thinking to escape from him, ends up in its clutches. Curupira, a tool created by university students, is still in the testing phase. It should be able to identify deforestation threats by “listening” to forest sounds and “isolating” those that may be associated with illegal activity, such as the sound of a chainsaw.

“The chainsaw is an anomalous sound for a forest environment,” explained researcher Raimundo Claudio Souza Gomez, according to the Italian agency ANSA. “Therefore, I can teach our system to clearly identify this sound while ignoring all the others.” The system involves installing a series of these gadgets one kilometer apart to create a network of devices that communicate with each other and then send suspicious information to the data processing center.

At first glance, this device looks like a modem attached to the tree bark. But through the use of artificial intelligence, Semana magazine reports, it is able to distinguish sounds, for example, a chainsaw, as mentioned above, or the engine of an approaching car.

“The goal is to integrate other monitoring systems that already exist,” explains Raimundo Claudio Souza Gomez. “While satellite images detect forests that have already been cleared, the artificial intelligence system will be able to warn when deforestation begins.”