Two scientists have developed a system that could end man-animal conflicts, especially elephant herds straying into human habitat and destroying crops. The system detects the intrusion of wild elephants into human habitat and sends an SMS warning to the forest officials.
According to researchers S J Sugumar and R Jayaparvathy of Tamil Nadu, who developed the system, it requires a geophone string, threshold comparator with amplification module, embedded micro controller, GSM, and power supply.
In an article appeared on the latest issue of ‘Current Science’ journal, the researchers claimed that elephant movement would be tracked electronically using the vibrations created by the footfall of the animal.
The footfall of the elephant produces a vibration on the ground which is sensed by the geophones underground. The geophone then generates an electrical signal of small voltage (mV), and it is amplified and compared with a threshold value which is set according to the voltage caused by the vibrations produced by a single elephant in a specified range. When the ground vibration generated by the footfall of an elephant exceeds the threshold, it creates an event for the embedded controller through an interrupt. On reception of the interrupt, the embedded controller sends a warning message in the form of SMS using GSM transceiver unit to the Forest officials, the researchers said.
“We have designed, tested and implemented the hardware module for intrusion detection. The sensors will be placed in specific areas where the elephants can enter human habitats. The type of species is determined using the classification process and the classified output is displayed. This helps to warn people about the presence of elephants and will give advance information to the authorities so that they can take necessary action to chase the pachyderms back to the forest,” they added.