Radar warns drivers when there's a moose on the loose

IN THE wilds of Canada, thousands of motorists have accidents involving moose every year. A new roadside radar system could fix that by keeping track of large animals and warning drivers when it would be wise to slow down.

Abir Mukherjee of AUG Signals in Toronto says existing set-ups, which use light beam tripwires, are not reliable. "With a tripwire system, when an animal crosses it into the road, it will alert," he says. "But after a fixed time, the system goes off. Then the system doesn't know where the animal is."

The Large Animal Detection System (LADS) sends out a 360-degree radar signal every second, then monitors the reflections to work out what animals are there. Its software allows it to ignore small animals and vegetation in the radar's path.

The detector has been running as a pilot project on Canada's Highway 416 near Kemptville, Ontario, since last year. LADS has a radius of 700 metres and works in harsh weather and heavy snow. When it detects an animal,lights flash on street signs to alert drivers. It also records data on the number and speed of vehicles.

Mukherjee will present a paper on LADS at the IEEE Sensors conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in November.