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| He finally gets his brain. |
Scarecrows make good evil monsters in scary movies but they have long been a rather useless way of scaring birds away from crops.
So researchers at the University of South Florida have developed the "Intelligent Scarecrow," according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's excellent News in Science website.
As the website reports here:
The Intelligent Scarecrow is dressed in like an American football player, with helmet and baggy jersey. But it is brains, not brawn, that make it a threat.
The helmet conceals an internet-enabled videocamera that takes in a wide field of view, which can be accessed via a website. A microprocessor with image processing software the students wrote scans for colour and shape differences between frames.
If the software sees bright orange, it will not trigger a response. So a farmer wearing a bright orange vest can tend crops without being seen as a threat.
But other changes trigger sprinklers to the right and left of the scarecrow to shoot out powerful jets of water up to 9 metres.
The device can also blast loud sounds, such as a shotgun noise or the cry of a predatory hawk, through nearby speakers.
And because it's internet-enabled, the scarecrow can send a text message to a mobile phone or an email to a computer alerting the farmer of threats.
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