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Jakarta Post

TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL

Up, up and away: Drones can be used to map zones, identify diseased plants (with a slight camera modification) and settle land disputes that frequently arise in regions

Juliana Harsianti (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, December 7, 2016

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TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL

Up, up and away: Drones can be used to map zones, identify diseased plants (with a slight camera modification) and settle land disputes that frequently arise in regions. (Courtesy of pixabay)

Two young people reveal the story behind their breakthroughs in making technology accessible for all.

Technology is created to make life easier, as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone invention and Alan Turing’s code breaking machine that led to present-day computers have shown. Today, satellites, the internet and cell phones are among the pillars of modern human life.

Sadly, some types of technology are still costly and beyond the reach of people living in certain regions. Several remote parts of Indonesia even have no power supply or telephone landlines. Its residents, even when urgently needing to communicate, use cell phones with hard-to-attain signals.

The unfavorable conditions have prompted some people to innovate using technology just to fulfill the needs of the majority. Ferbriadi Pratama and Irendra Radjawali, two youths presenting their ideas at the recent Young People’s Festival held by Tempo Institute, Jakarta, are among those offering breakthroughs in technology.

Their stories began with the difficulties they faced. Febri had trouble finding a garbage dump while Irendra — commonly called Radja — found difficulty in finding a low-priced drone for his research. So they both created technological applications to facilitate community activities.

When working in Bali, Febri, a native of Bogor, did not expect rubbish to be rarely collected from houses there. “I’ve been accustomed to being visited by trash collectors in Bogor so I thought all residents had the same experience,” he said.

In Bali, every three days Febri had to take garbage from the lodging house to the nearest waste dump or even to his office. He was fortunate to be able to transport it by motorcycle, but he was aware of the great troubles families, particularly those living in housing complexes on the city’s outskirts, faced in dealing with huge amounts of garbage.

Febri then met Olivier Poulian, who had long been engaged in waste recycling in Bali, at a Start-Up Weekend program to discuss a solution to the garbage issue. They planned an application for trash collection, which at the time was called Cash for Trash, but later was changed to Gringgo.

As their first step, Febri and Olivier conducted a field survey. “The application we wanted to make was trying to connect residents, trash collectors, rubbish dumps and waste recycling sites,” explained Febri, the interior designer. These places should be in close proximity to enable more efficient operations. Initially they cooperated with Seminyak Clean to map collectors, dumps and recycling spots.

After the network covering collectors, door-to-door trash gatherers, dumps and recycling sites was mapped, they began to work on the application. The Android application was created first, followed by a version for the iPhone. Through the app, users can locate the collectors, recycling spots or dump locations closest to their homes. “We also suggest the separation of organic from inorganic waste so as to get a higher price at recycling units,” he added.

Apart from finding garbage dump locations, the application also monitors the movement of dump trucks through the Global Positioning System (GPS) design. “In this way we can discover areas still with minimal activities of garbage disposal transportation,” Febri pointed out.

Meanwhile, the high cost of drones forced Radja to refer to a YouTube tutorial to create his first drone, which helped him successfully build a drone capable of flying.

Facilitated by his research, Radja encouraged others to build drones. “At first I shared the cheap drone-making knowledge with close friends. This information was eventually disseminated so that many communities made low-cost drones. They asked questions via chats, email messages and other ways,” said Radja.

A Drone Academy was later set up to assist people in villages in need of drones at low prices. Radja also referred to the presence of many communities building drones at affordable prices in other countries, while stressing the importance of its functions rather than just its low-cost benefit.

Drones can be used to map zones, identify diseased plants (with a slight camera modification) and settle land disputes that frequently arise in regions. “Indonesia lacks geospatial data and through this drone project we wish to help regional communities record the geographic conditions of their zones,” he said.

Radja does not want Indonesia’s geographic data to be gathered by foreign consultants, later requiring Indonesian people to pay them for data access. “I’m also campaigning for open data so that the geographic data collected can be accessed by everyone.”

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