SURVEILLANCE AND TRACKING OF ELEPHANTS USING VOCAL SPECTRAL INFORMATION

Abstract

Human-elephant conflict is a major problem which leads to crop damage, human death and injuries caused by elephants, and elephants being killed by humans. Elephant Intrusion has been on the rise in the forest border areas with herds of elephants straying into human habitation and creating a great loss to their properties. The surveillance and tracking of elephants are difficult due to their size and nature of movement. In this paper, a method for detecting and tracking elephants along the forest border areas using the vocal communications of elephants is presented. Two approaches are used one is to find the spectral energy magnitude and the other to determine highest pitch frequency produced by elephants. A threshold is identified for the two approaches; once the elephant vocal communication signal crosses the limit an alert will be sent to the forest officials notifying them about the elephant intrusion to redirect the elephant back to the forest.