it be effortless to get extremely jaded if you happen to read about tech within the news. From privacy breaches to tech as a catalyst for govt social handle, daily we endure witness to more and more examples that move further away from the ideals of people who created the tech within the first place. but I nevertheless have hope that tech can change not simplest our particular person lives but the societies we reside in — for the stronger. Take a glance at some of my favorite examples of how corporations are the usage of tech comparable to photo cognizance, geolocation analytics, wearable tech, and drones to deliver insights, analytics, and potential options for severe problems that humans alone have been unable to solve in any significant means:
eyeWitnessIn November 2010, harrowing pictures bought via UK broadcaster Channel 4 emerged, seemingly displaying Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil prisoners. Mark Ellis, executive Director of the overseas Bar affiliation (IBA), turned into one of the most foreign attorneys requested to determine the video. He discovered that the authenticity of the footage couldn't be tested. 'staring at that film became a catalyst for the theory that an app may be created to behave as a device of verification and allow the video to be admissible in a court docket of law,' he says. So started a 4-year effort to create such know-how. The effect is eyeWitness to Atrocities, a cell app with the interesting means to authenticate and securely keep photos of gross human rights abuses while keeping the anonymity of the user.
The app is a tool for human rights defenders, documenters, journalists, and other courageous residents to capture verifiable pictures related to international atrocity crimes. The effortless-to-use camera app captures the metadata obligatory to make sure that photographs may also be used in investigations or trials. It then safely outlets the information in a storage facility, hosted by means of Lexis Nexis and maintained with the aid of the eyeWitness firm. The information received is reviewed with the aid of the eyeWitness knowledgeable crew, who then are looking for to be sure that the information is used to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice.
Air ShepherdPoaching is a significant issue in Africa, with just about all poaching of big animals happens in a single day, specifically right through full moons. Air Shepherd is run through UAV & Drone options with aid from California-based Elephant Cooperation and uses drones to offer protection to rhinos and elephants in Africa. using sophisticated three-plane working teams that works with rangers on the ground, drones are flown over excessive likely poaching areas, permitting rangers to intercept suspects earlier than a poaching incident can take area.
The application makes use of intelligence from distinctive sources whereas infrared-capable drones fly silently. a new SPOT software, developed with the institution of Southern California, automatically detects poachers in less than half a second. Rangers are then sent to intercept them. for this reason, Air Shepherd drones offer more insurance policy for rangers who, while patrolling at evening, are exposed to a high level of danger from armed poachers and wild animals. Air Shepherd's experience on the ground has shown that once they are flying drones, poaching stops.
Air Shepherd has flown in distinct African nations, including South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and now, Botswana. With greater than 30,000 flight hours, Air Shepherd drone groups are pushing the boundaries of drone technology by using flying 25 km beyond the road of sight and at evening — when poachers operate.
morning time ver.βRobots working in cafes is hardly ever anything new in Japan, however a brand new pilot aims to offer something in fact high-quality. A partnership between robotics startup Ory labs, NPO Nippon foundation, and airline ANA, have created a transient eatery known as crack of dawn ver.β. It's staffed by way of robots that are operated remotely by means of paralyzed people, who can control the robots from their personal homes. The robots are operated by way of a group of workers of 10 individuals, whose situations latitude from spinal twine accidents to ALS, with many controlling the robots by the use of eye move and adaptive know-how.
The team of workers are paid 1,000 yen per hour ($8.80USD), here is the regular wage for half-time work in Japan. however extra importantly, it offers a sense of aim and independence for americans whose fine of life has been compromised because of serious fitness situations.
BBC Africa EyeIn July 2018 a horrifying video all started to flow into on social media. It shows two women and two young little ones being led away at gunpoint with the aid of a group of Cameroonian soldiers who accused the ladies of belonging to the militant neighborhood Boko Haram. The captives are blindfolded, pressured to the floor, and shot 22 times.
The video became extensively circulated with speculation concerning the identities of the victims and offenders. BBC's Africa Eye crew determined to investigate, relying on open-source resources to check as geolocation, weapons analysis, and car tracking. through forensic analysis of the pictures, become able to investigate precisely where the adventure came about, when it took place, and who was responsible for the killings. as an example, equipment comparable to Google Earth and Sentinel Hub enabled them to pair the mountain's ridgeline in the footage to the topography of Northern Cameroon, as a means to determine the place. An evaluation of the shadows solid as soldiers walked with using SunCalc made it viable to assess the time frame. because of the facts, the govt finally recounted that the killings considered in this video were conducted by means of Cameroonian soldiers, with felony motion in process.
VFRAMEAs evidenced within the work of EyeWitness above, human rights researchers regularly count on video clips shared online to document warfare crimes, atrocities, and human rights violations. Manually reviewing these movies is expensive and might cause vicarious trauma. Researchers at Syrian Archive, a company committed to documenting battle crimes and human rights violations, have already identified evidence of illegal cluster bombs in dozens of video clips. but manually reviewing videos does not scale and currently, there are over 1.500.000 movies waiting to be reviewed -over three years of conclusion to conclusion viewing.
In response, Adam Harvey and fellow contributors in Berlin have created VFRAME (visible Forensics and Metadata Extraction), a group of open supply laptop vision tools designed peculiarly for human rights investigations that rely on tremendous video datasets. peculiarly, it offers personalized state-of-the-art tools for object detection and quantification, scene classification, visible search, photograph annotation for developing datasets, APIs to combine with latest workflows, the potential to educate new algorithms, and picture content material filtering algorithms to reduce exposure to anxious content. any one with entry to the mission website will ultimately be capable of check the laptop imaginative and prescient algorithms and discover the datasets created for VFRAMEproject collaborations.
CrowdSource RescueTech would not need to be overly advanced to be lifestyles-saving. As Quartz suggested: "On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 28, Matthew Marchetti become one in all heaps of Houstonians feeling powerless as their city drowned in tropical storm Harvey's deluge. americans necessary aid whereas expecting emergency features. by means of Monday morning, the 27-yr-historic developer, sitting in his leaky office, had slapped together a web mapping device to track stranded residents. A day later, virtually 5,000 people had registered to be rescued, and a pair of,seven hundred of them have been secure."
CrowdSource Rescue has helped connect over 12,000 expert and volunteer rescuers with 35,000 americans the use of its mapping and dispatching technology. it be a public-protection grade platform that makes use of subsequent-generation technology to promptly connect each skilled first-responders and vetted volunteers with response, relief, and healing situations earlier than, all over, and immediately after a disaster.
issues:
opensource ,computing device learning ,photograph cognizance ,geolocation ,robotics ,ai ,humanitarian support ,IoT