chennai mananimal conflicts are usually sparse within the urban sprawl but on the outskirts of the city the menace of wild animals is often seen along the boundaries between forests and neighbouring farmlands nerkundram in kancheepuram district is one such locality at night acres of farmland turn into meandering grounds for wild animals like porcupines wild boars jackals and monkeys leading to the crops incurring heavy damage with this in mind a rural research group from iitmadras rutag has crafted a technology that can prevent such lossestwo third year students ravi khatri engineering design and s sarath kumar metallurgical engineering have designed a low cost solution in the form of a sensorembedded stick covering the perimeter of the entire field forming an invisible boundarythe device will be dug into the soil and on picking up animal movement will send out an alarm to drive it away rutag the rural tech centre at iitm which has developed this tech will be testing out a prototype at the institute campus shortly before implementing it at neerkundram by august this year just one of the sensors can potentially cause a false alarm which is where the second one comes into play the passive ir infrared sensor will detect body heat temperature of the animals along with movement while the microwave sensor will send out a signal which will be reflected back in case an animal is moving around it explains abhijit p deshpande professor department of chemical engineering and head of rutag who is overseeing the project implementationexplaining that nearly 40 of a field can be overrun and damaged by forest animals deshpande says that the technology can cut out human intervention or in the worst case scenario buy a farmer more time in the event of his crop being trespassed by a herd during harvest time the animals are drawn to the field due to the scent of the crops be it paddy vegetables or groundnut we will be consulting animal behavior experts to decide what kind of sound the device will produce the idea is to only deter them not affect them in any way he said the present project will be trailed at the iit campus to track deer movement after which it will be implemented at the neerkundram forest area boundaries where the farmlands lie the cost of each sensorembedded stick is projected to be only about a few hundred rupeesit is also being carried out on a larger scale by ppg college coimbatore to detect elephant movement in the anaikatti belt the project is also being funded by rutag