ᐈ Drones are another tool to alleviate the problem of marine litter

Drones against marine debris: in the image a drone next to a beach.

World Water Day is celebrated this Friday, March 22 and the theme of the United Nations this year is: Do not leave anyone behind. This recalls how important water is for human survival. It is an element that we all need, therefore, everyone should benefit. One of the problems facing our oceans is marine litter. The fight to end this scourge already has some new allies: the drones. These will help streamline the tasks of quantification and classification of waste, a task that is currently carried out using traditional methods, in order to know exactly the scale of the problem. This is the philosophy behind the LitterDrone project, funded by the European Commission and developed by a consortium comprising the University of Vigo, the Spanish Association of Marine Garbage and the company Grafinta S.A. 20minutes interview with the project director, Fernando Martín, professor at the Telecommunications School of the University of Vigo.

What does the 'LitterDrone' project consist of in general terms? It is a monitoring tool for marine garbage, which is found on beaches, in principle, not the floating one. And monitoring means detecting how much waste there is, trying to measure them in size and the area of ​​the sand covered by waste. Finally, identify the types of waste that we find. With what objectives is this project born? The main objective is to try to provide another tool to alleviate the problem of marine litter. It is innovative in the field of monitoring, of being able to study the problem, not only to know the quantity and nature of the waste that appears. It is about knowing how to use the information to optimize cleaning campaigns.

What added value or benefits do you have with respect to traditional technologies?

Currently, the only technologies available are manual. They are people on foot writing down. Faced with that, LitterDrone has the advantage of generating images of the waste we have, both a global image and a map of the entire beach. Then, when processing that global image, we obtain individual photos, that is, capture each one of the waste. Therefore, we have more information. When a human creator points something, we trust him, but if he makes a mistake there is no way to correct it, while we would have a record. With him we would work a posteriori, check if the annotations are good. We also know where each waste is, something that in a human sample records what there is and can not be mapped or measured. We do know how much it measures.

Have you started working with any Spanish beach or any EU country?

The tests were all done in Galicia, in ilsas Cíes, which is a natural park. We have worked with two beaches, one that is already in the Spanish monitoring program, the beach Rodas and another nearby that is the Nosa Señora.

What types of objects are detected and which are the most frequent?

Most of the ones you find is plastic. The types of objects that are most repeated are bottles, stoppers, sticks, lollipop sticks or ice cream and is also quite common, one of the waste that usually brings the sea, are the remains of fishing or agriculture. These can be remnants of networks, broken nets, remnants of clothing and some accessories that are used in the agriculture of the sea.

Can the drone quantify the amount of garbage? How much have you arrived?

Actually, in the Cies, in the flights we did, we found the beach quite clean because it is a natural park and it is cleaned periodically. Interestingly, one of the flights was one day and the next day the sea brought many waste wood, of course that at the time of the flight that was not, was the day of return and therefore could not take record of it.

Is the project already viable? Can it start to work?

Yes, but it has its difficulties. You have to travel to a specific beach, the pilot by legislation has to be close to the device and can not fly a great distance. Maybe you can study a beach with difficult access, while you see you can work or see if you can do it on several beaches. Afterwards, the images are processed in the computer and the report is obtained which is then reviewed by humans. Basically, to see what you have identified and to detect some objects that the program has not recognized. The device recognizes typical objects such as cans, caps, etc. and then he learns.

What difficulties have you encountered when working with this project?

We have had many difficulties with the legislation on the use of drones, because legally we must make a flight plan, with some advance. Also, being a natural park we had to ask for a permit and at some point we had to ask someone to leave the beach for security reasons. At work later, in the laboratory being a new project many mistakes are found and must be corrected.

A drone captures incredible images of 'The door of hell' that has been burning for 40 years

A drone capable of withstanding high temperatures has captured impressive images of a crater located in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, which is known as 'The Gate of Hell', reaching 1,000 degrees centigrade. The most surprising is that it has been burning for more than 40 years. The 69-meter wide and 30-deep crater was formed with the explosion of a Soviet platform in which natural gas was investigated, leaving behind this "mouth of hell". For fear of harmful gases being released into the atmosphere, they burned the remains with the hope that they would go out in a few weeks, but that was not the case. It has not stopped burning since 1971 and it has ended up becoming the tourist attraction of the region.

"The history of the crater is fascinating," says Alessandro Belgiojoso, an operator and "the Russians drilled the desert looking for natural gas in the fourth richest country in the world." drone photographer to the Daily Mail. Belgiojoso explains that the best option was to turn on the gas and wait for it to dry, but it did not happen that way. "This story is not something to be proud of," he adds. The crater, 150 miles from the capital of Turkmenistan (Ashgabat), has become an attraction for hundreds of onlookers who come to observe the fascinating fire pit.

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