Incidents of man-animal conflict are on the rise, affecting agriculture crops and taking a toll on the income of farmers not to mention the threat to human life.
Fuselage Innovations, a Kochi-based agri-tech startup, has come up with an innovative solution to the problem. This includes an integrated approach through the deployment of Internet of Things devices and drones to divert animals by generating sounds and signals in the form of an alarm.
Devan Chandrasekharan, Founder, Fuselage Innovations, said the device — with the help of AI cameras — will identify the animal and produce corresponding repeller sound and scare them away before it destroys the crops. There is also a mechanism to ward off the animal through a collection of pre-set noises.
For instance, the noise of honeybees could scare elephants away. With the detection of more than one species of animal, the device will identify the animals and produce sounds alternatively within a specific interval of time, he said.
Another option
There is also an option by deploying automatic UAV to follow the detected animal by producing sound and light in case the animal does not move from its position, he said.
The agri-tech start-up, which was incubated in 2020 in Kochi’s Maker Village, displayed its innovations at the Agrihackatone organised as part of VAIGA 2023 (Value Addition for Income Generation in Agriculture) organised by Kerala Agriculture University.
He said the animal detection alerts can be seen in the specific mobile application for easy tracking of each animal and conducting counter mechanisms. The application will show the user about the detected animals and alerts.
The start-up which works in the domain of sustainable agriculture also deployed most advanced solutions for mapping and diagnostics of farmland through dedicated UAV drones. “Our vision is for sustainable agriculture and food security through our digital farmland model to access agronomy knowledge and best farming practices”, he said.
Value added products
Besides agriculture drones, the company also provides value-added products such as FITS tracker to counter illegal transfer of agro machiney, fire-fighting solutions and precision farming protocols to ensure profitable farming. It has so far sold 16 drones across south India for the utilisation in various food and cash crops.
Another major development, he said, was the invitation from the Canadian government seeking the company’s service in their farm lands cultivating potato, soyabean, canola flower etc. “We are setting up an office in Canada in a month’s time as the government has offered a space in the Toronto Business Development Centre” for developing products”, he said.
“We are also working with tribal centres in Vattavada near Munnar to provide long lasting solutions in precision farming”, he added.