El Pais: The ‘Big Brother’ of the Amazon

On 5th June, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published an article (in Spanish) about the Providence Project and the work members of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group are doing in the Amazon, in partnership with Mamirauá Institute (Brazil), the Federal University of Amazonas (Brazil), and the Sense of Silence Foundation of the Technical University of Catalonia (Spain).

“A pioneering scientific project developing a technology that, in addition to deciphering the biodiversity in the greater tropical forest, allows listening and seeing from home, the animal life in one of the last frontiers of our planet.

“For the first time, however, that information may be within our reach. Coordinated by the Brazilian Institute Mamirauá, one of the most important study centers of the Amazon in socio-environmental matters, a group of 40 Brazilian, Australian, Spanish and French researchers from disciplines as diverse as electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, computer science, electronics and biology .

They have shared their knowledge to develop a project called Providence that uses technology to monitor, decipher and transmit life in the heart of the jungle. All this twenty-four hours a day and 365 days a year.

“We will start with 10 audio and video devices connected to the network and installed in trees, in a region of the Brazilian Amazon that is flooded during periods of the year and is difficult to access. But our ambition is to reach 1,000 cameras throughout the jungle in the coming years”, Brazilian researcher Emiliano Ramalho, who has been studying felines since 2004 and one of the jaguar’s great experts, tells PLANETA FUTURO.

Read the full story here (available in Spanish only).