James Milward created an AI camera mechanism, the Furbinator 3000, to shoo animals from his garden.
A British man has trained his home camera to shoo away badgers and foxes, thanks to AI.
James Milward managed to connect his Ring camera at his Surrey home to a device that sends out high-frequency sounds to ward off the woodland critters.
He admitted it “sounds crazy”, but he swore by using the Furbinator 3000 to make sure his garden stayed neat and tidy, but it required making sure the system understood what it was monitoring.
James told BBC News: “At first, it recognised the badger as an umbrella. I did some fine-tuning, and it came out as a sink, or a bear if I was lucky. Pretty much a spectacular failure.”
He eventually taught the mechanism what he wanted to ward off by showing it photographs through Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine learning, and it eventually did the trick.
It worked by spotting a badger, and then a noise sounded to encourage the animals to move along, a measure to stop them leaving droppings so the property remained clean for his kids to play in the next morning.
However, animal welfare groups have condemned the practice.
The RSPCA have previously said: “Noise levels produced by such ultrasonic devices are likely to be aversive to some animals, potentially causing them discomfort, fear and/ or pain and predicting an individual’s response is difficult.”
James responded to these concerns and claims that he “recognises the importance of living harmoniously with wildlife” but he wanted to protect his yard, and believes the tech can be rolled out in other places.
He said: “In agricultural settings there aren’t really any safe deterrents for getting rid of potential predators, and this is an ideal solution for that.”
UK man creates AI camera to shoo animals away from his garden
