Hawkeye

This solution uses technology to lessen snake encounters and snake bites in the backyards and potentially in larger areas such as farms.

In the United States, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates around 7,000 to 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes each year. Of those bitten, NIOSH reports around five people die. Venomous snakes in the U.S. include rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths or water moccasins and coral snakes.

In the tropical countries, WHO estimates 81,000 - 138,000 deaths due to snake bites and three times as many amputations.

Another perspective to consider is the fear factor in humans on encountering a snake that most of them attempt to kill the snake that they encounter which is not the right thing to do. 

Snakes are an important part of the food chain and biodiversity.

HawkEYE, an automated process through an app to scan for, identify and safely deter snakes in nature. HawkEYE is an integrated system consisting of a mobile app, which can scan an area for snakes on demand, a camera to capture pictures of the area, an algorithm to classify the pictures and an intervention mechanism triggered by the algorithm’s output. The intervention mechanism aims to drive snakes back to their habitats by spraying water on them, as the app interface provides the user with information about the snake.

Please refer to this blog for more details around the vision:

Preventing Snakebites: How one young innovator is using STEM to lessen snake encounters - Society for Science

Parents of little children who want to be able to send their kids to play in the backyards without any fear of harmful creatures.

Farmers and workers in tropical countries are directly impacted by snake bites.

Also, kids living in farms and neighborhoods that are infested with snakes are at a high risk of snake bite.

Hawkeye works to identify the presence of snakes and intervenes timely to reduce any human snake encounters.

As of now, I am a single member team. I plan to collaborate with others that are interested in a similar problem /solution.

We ran a short survey to 60 parents and got results that were encouraging to proceed with the solution.

I also met with experts on snakes from NC.

As of today, there is no integrated mechanism to keep backyards safe. There are some motion sensor enabled devices but overall, they don't help much preventing snake bites.

This solution is aimed at reducing the number of snake bites in an eco-friendly manner.

The solution can be scaled and extended to cater to larger areas such as farms or to villages where snakes even enter homes.

The challenge would be to make it affordable to cater to lower income groups.

We are in the process of building a larger, second prototype that could monitor larger areas like farms and parks. We are experimenting using an autonomous vehicle, independent from human interference or supervision, that carries the intervention mechanism. It has a very different design. “Instead of a huge stepper motor with lengthy inlet and outlet pipes, there will be a small, sharp nozzle that can move from side to side to maximize coverage. The water source will be inside the container, and there will be short pipes that supply water to the nozzle.”

The autonomous vehicle will be programmed to move along designated paths covering a large area. If a snake is detected along the way, HawkEYE would trigger the intervention mechanism (the jet of water) to drive the snake back to its habitat. This design would allow for constant monitoring without the need for human action or direction. We are also working to add a night vision camera to our prototype, as snakes are active during both the day and night.

My AI enabled solution starts with an Android App that allows users to scan their backyard On demand.

Whenever the user clicks on the scan button on the app, the processor (raspberry pi) sets the camera in
motion. The camera takes multiple images and sends pictures of the backyard to the ML algorithm which classifies the images. If it detects a snake in the picture, our specially designed eco-friendly intervention
mechanism immediately directs a jet of water towards the snake to send it back to its habitat. After that, the information about the snake, such as the picture, species, whether it's venomous or not, and the time it was spotted gets sent to the app, alerting the user. The app also provides information on specific snake behaviors. For example, how a Death Adder pretends dead when intervened.

Integrated Eco-friendly Intervention Mechanism:
This is unique to the process at hand. The machine learning algorithm on the processor triggers one of our intervention mechanisms.
a. Water Jet Intervention - In this mechanism the water jet is enabled by a stepper motor or a series of stepper motors connected to a water source. As soon as the Machine Learning Algorithm detects a snake in the scanned image, the algorithm sends the following details to the automated motor.
- Location Coordinates
- Angular position
Note- The components used in this solution could be replaced by more advanced publicly available products.
Based on the details sent by the algorithm, instructions are sent to the intervention mechanism to adjust the following:
- Angle of Jet
- Speed of Jet

Phase 2:

We are working on a unique mechanism where an autonomous vehicle travels to the location in the farm /streets based on the location coordinates provided by the algorithm and initiates the intervention mechanism
which is either spray a jet of water or discharge steam at the object to drive it away. 

This solution is right now not deployed. This is in prototype stage.

According to WHO, there are over 5.4 million snake bites each year killing over 125000 and permanently disabling 3 times more people each year. Antivenoms are the only cure for a venomous snake bite and not all snakes have antivenoms which means there is nosaving the person from certain bites.

The solution has the ability to serve thousands of backyards in the US and in countries with high incidence of snake bites such as India.

Right now, I am a student studying 8th grade and am passionate about saving human lives and protecting our eco-system.

I have constraints in terms of execution beyond prototype. I am looking for guidance and help from experts in making this solution useful to all those impacted by snakebites.

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We did a short survey of parents from my school and it showed a strong need to monitor and protect backyards from venomous snakes and other creatures to keep their peace of mind.

We can provide an integrated mechanism for monitoring and intervening, driving away any harmful animals from backyards and yet in an eco-friendly manner.

We would like to partner with Organizations such as WHO to bring this solution to people that need it.