A group of four teenagers at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado have invented a device that could save thousands of animals from being hit by cars every year, Good Good Good reported.
The teens are calling their invention "Project Deer." It uses infrared cameras, an algorithm, and machine learning to alert drivers when an animal may be near.
"The current plan is to utilize an infrared camera to image the surroundings in front to detect animals and warn the driver when animals are in the environment so they can pay more attention, slow down, and be much more likely to avoid a collision," Bri Scoville, one of the teenagers, told CBS Colorado.
Over the past 10 years, an average of 3,300 wildlife collisions — largely deer and elk — have been reported to the Colorado Department of Transportation each year, with another 2,000 to 4,000 unreported collisions every year.
The Colorado DOT utilizes stationary wildlife sensors, but the teen inventors hope that their creation will be even more effective at protecting wild animals.
Even better, the device is cheap, requiring only four $5 infrared sensors. That means it should be widely accessible and affordable if it ever makes it to market.
"We spoke with someone at Audi; they said that there are huge hopes for this device if we're able to get this to work," Siddhi Singh, another of the inventors, told CBS Colorado. "That's our ultimate goal: to engineer something that anyone and everyone can put on their cars."
All across the world, teens are coming up with wildly creative inventions that can help protect our environment. Some recent examples include a group of teenagers in Turkey inventing a new type of crop-boosting plasma, a New Jersey teen who gene-edited rice plants to make them grow more efficiently, and another New Jersey teen who invented a device that annihilates spotted lanternflies.
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