For the Smart Move season, we investigated what is a transportation problem in our local community.  Surprisingly, something that seems very cute and harmless is actually creating a chronic, dangerous, and costly traffic safety here in NJ….namely, deer. Since 2007, deer accidents have risen by 54% in both New Jersey and Nebraska, the highest increase in the country.  The death toll from deer related accidents has also been steadily rising. Our team studied the reason for this deer population increase, researched their habitats, and analyzed different deer deterrence devices that are current on the market.  Somehow, the deer have grown accustomed to all the lights and sounds in the suburban area. The current deer deter devices which emit lights or sound toward the animals now do not ward deer off the roads.  For any deer-car collisions, the deer obviously do not have a chance to take the lesson-learned home to their herd. Drivers are also ignoring all the road-side deer crossing warning signs and then do not have time to react to sudden deer crossings.  Therefore, we decided to design a driver warning system instead.

Our idea is to use tire noise as passive sonar to detect deer on the roadside and send out a warning signal to the drivers.

A series of indoor and outdoor experiments were devised to see if  such a design is possible.  The sound files collected from the experiments were then fed through three software programs (SigView, LabView and SpectroLab) and converted from waveforms into spectrgrams to look for frequency absorption differences.

Zooming in as much as possible on all the spectrograms, a repeatable difference occurred in a certain range on all tests when compare with an object presence with no object. From all the tests, we found that the sound absorption/reflection spectrum of different materials was unique. Therefore, it is possible to sense the presence or absence of an object using sound to create such warning device.  Also, we drew on how animals such as bats and dolphins, or a blind boy who can sense their surroundings using sound, or how submarines can detect things underwater.

We envision that our so called “Deer Avoidance Device” module when set up initially, will run through a calibration routine to figure out its surroundings, and adjust for weather conditions.  When the module detects the car’s headlights, it will use the tire noise to look for gaps in frequencies. If it does sense a lack of certain frequencies, it knows that there’s a deer nearby and will start flashing colored lights at drivers to warn them to slow down and watch out for deer. These light and sound circuits are small enough to use ultra capacitors instead of lithium batteries to reduce maintenance and battery changes.  It will be charged by a solar panel during the day as is already being done in the Deer-Deter systems.

To help out the local economy, we will use local labor and materials instead of imported technology. Then we will share the design on as an open source project so that people everywhere can improve on it.  These improvements will not only protect both people and animals, utilize local labor, and allow input from others, but also minimize shipping and greenhouse gases.

All in all, it is obvious that deer related collisions in New Jersey are a big transportation problem.  By detecting the deer, we can warn drivers and reduce crashes. With passive sonar, ultra-capacitors, and solar panels, our module can be installed and trusted to work for many years.  By allowing our innovative solution to be open source, our idea can evolve on its own, increasing its effectiveness and feasibility.  Our goal is to make transportation safer for everyone by reducing animal related vehicular accidents.

Our next step is to learn enough electronics to build an actual model to test it out in the field!