VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

According to the researcher of the Mechanical Engineering Study Program at the Faculty of Engineering, Gajah Mada University (UGM), Dr. Gesang Nugroho, in recent years Indonesia's forest area has been shrinking, mostly due to forest fires and illegal logging. Geographical conditions, extensive peat-lands, lack of road access, limited human resources, and lack of facilities pose major problems in monitoring and extinguishing fires early. Therefore, early detection of hotspots in the forest is needed to avoid the spread of forest fires. Seeing this problem, Dr. Gesang Nugroho has developed a drone for early detection of forest fires. The drone is named ‘ELANG CARAKA’.

The drone, Elang Caraka, is designed to be able to fly for six hours with a distance of 200 km to carry out regional surveillance autonomously. Dr. Gesang Nugroho explained that the operator can control the drone remotely and view the recorded images directly through the monitor on the Ground Control Station. Elang Caraka has a wingspan of 3.6 m and a fuselage of 1.92 m, and is equipped with a thermal camera to transmit live aerial footage, which can be viewed on the ground. The drone can detect fires with the Intelligent Electrical Nose (E-nose) sensor which is able to detect the presence of smoke which is indicated by an increase in the output graph of the intelligent sensor compared to normal smokeless conditions. E-nose works like a human nose, using an array of gas sensors that can detect the smoke.

Elang Caraka can also be operated day and night. This drone has a plus because the fire monitoring which has so far used helicopters can only be done during the day. So, if a forest fire occurs at night, the fire has already grown and is more difficult to extinguish. In addition, there is much operational cost. But, Elang Caraka is cheaper than helicopters. So, it is hoped that the presence of the Elang Caraka drone will be able to reduce the number of forest fires in Indonesia.