Drone Based Bird Hazer for Sunflower Crop

Abstract

Bird's damage to agricultural crops is an important cause for the reduction of yield resulting in huge economic losses for the farming fraternity across the world. The natural habitats' of flocks across the world, for their feeding, largely depend on field crops. This would in turn cause problems to farmers, in large scale crop losses measuring up to 10 to 30% of total yield. To mitigate this huge crop loss due to the instincts of birds, we developed a technology to solve the problem permanently by adopting the latest available user-friendly techniques in the form of bird hazer. Numerous methods have been used in controlling birds, e.g. chemical, auditory, visual and lethal. In this research, visual and auditory methods were applied, where reflective boards and speakers were installed on a drone and were flown at different altitudes and intervals. The scaring approach was divided into four (4) categories; UAV, a combination of UAV and High DB Buzzer, a combination of UAV and signal generator and a combination of UAV, High DB Buzzer and signal generator respectively. The test was conducted at a sunflower field in GKVK, Bangalore. The findings indicate that a combination of UAV, High DB Buzzer and signal generator techniques scared the highest number of birds at a height of 2 m. The interval of flight does not show any correlation with the number of birds that flew away. In this research work, we developed an unmanned aerial bird hazer to mitigate and minimize flocks menace in the field for the reduction of crop damages by flocks.