Imagine this: you drive after sundown through a road that cuts through dense forests. Nocturnal animals are on the prowl, and the fear usually is of one ending up being surrounded by an elephant herd, or accidently knocking down a leopard or a tiger. But what if display boards along the way offer warnings of elephants or tigers using the path ahead. It could reduce accidents and man-animal conflicts.
This scenario makes use of a new sensor technology that is envisaged to aid wildlife conservation. It has been developed by scientists in the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (DIAP) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.).
The concept, which was published recently in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Sensors Journal, is relevant due to discussions on extending the ban on vehicular movement in protected areas at night.
G.R. Jayanth, professor at the DIAP, who is the lead author of the paper, said testing had shown that the height was recorded accurately 98.5 per cent of the time. The laboratory prototype costs Rs. 5,000, which would go down significantly when produced in bulk, he said.
The product lies somewhere between a motion sensor and a CCTV camera. While a motion sensor can only detect motion and not the profile of the object causing the disturbance, a CCTV camera’s range is limited to about 20 metres and also requires manual intervention.
With remote areas being the best possible locations for this application, the scientists — Essa Mahapatra of Analog Devices (India) Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru, and P. Sathishkumar from the DIAP — have made a ‘conscious’ attempt to reduce power consumption and linked it to a solar charging system.
The unit consumes around 4.5W per hour while the figure for conventional CCTV cameras is between 20W and 40W. “Our aim is to reduce this to 1W so that it can be off the [electrical] grid,” said Mr. Jayanth.
IISc. team comes up with technology to aid wildlife conservation
