Signing you in

One person trying to address the problem is 17-year-old Avi Mohan Shukla, who recently completed his class 12 in Ranchi. Instead of joining college immediately, he has taken a gap year to work with officials at the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) on an AI-based elephant early warning and deterrent system.

“I felt this was one of the real issues in the state where technology could make a real difference,” said Shukla, whose solar-powered system is called InnoBox.

The idea took shape after Shukla participated in IIM Ranchi’s Young Changemakers programme in 2024. During a visit to Rasabeda village, around 45 km from Ranchi, as part of the programme, he found that crop damage caused by elephants was among the community’s biggest concerns.

The village, home to around 35 families, lies along an active elephant corridor and depends largely on farming. After interacting with the Adivasi residents of the village, he started looking into the issue of human-elephant conflict. “The ordeals of the villagers stayed in my memory. I started reading more about the conflict in the tribal areas, and I realised that it is a larger issue than I ever imagined,” he said.

It also reminded him of a story his grandfather told about a neighbour losing crops worth nearly Rs 1 lakh after a herd of elephants entered his field overnight.

Shukla built his first prototype in 2025 and tested it in Rasabeda. While the field trials showed promise, they also highlighted the limitations of the device, he said.

According to PTR Deputy Director Prajesh Jena, most current early warning systems rely on infrared sensors that trigger alarms whenever the beam is interrupted, often leading to false alerts caused by people, livestock or other animals.

Shukla’s device instead detects the seismic vibrations generated by elephant footsteps and then verifies it using radar before issuing an alert.

“The idea is to improve accuracy and reduce false detections,” Jena said. The device is currently undergoing trials at the reserve.

Shukla said, “I realised the challenge was not detecting movement but detecting elephants accurately. That led me to develop a new version of the device.”

Powered by solar energy, the device can also be fitted with a camera. Once it detects an elephant, it sounds a siren, captures photographs, records the location and time, and automatically sends alerts to forest officials through a web dashboard. The information can also be sent directly to mobile phones.

“The aim is not only to deter elephants before they enter villages but also to alert the Forest Department immediately so officials can respond without delay,” he said.

Shukla’s work came to the attention of the Forest Department after he showcased the project at various forums. The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests invited him to present the system, following which the department sanctioned Rs 1 lakh for research and development and asked him to build 10 devices for pilot testing.

Since June, Shukla has been working at PTR as a ‘temporary tech fellow’.

He has been collecting seismic data generated by elephant footsteps and radar signatures reflected from their bodies to train and refine the machine learning model.

“The model is ready. Right now, I am improving it every day, fixing bugs and testing the hardware enclosure so that it can work reliably in forest conditions,” he said.

His work at the reserve has also extended beyond elephant conflict. Over the past month, he has developed a QR code-based tree tracking system that allows officials to monitor trees digitally, and a web-based work management dashboard for assigning field tasks and uploading geo-tagged reports of incidents such as wildlife deaths, illegal felling and human-elephant conflict.

The reporting system, Shukla said, could also help speed up compensation claims in cases involving human fatalities.

Despite these projects, he said the elephant warning system remains his primary focus.

Shukla had secured admission to study computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong but decided against enrolling after failing to meet the scholarship requirements.

“I felt I already had an opportunity to build something useful here, so I decided to continue the research,” he said.

Jena said the prototype is currently being tested using trained elephants at the reserve and that its present detection range of 15-20 metres is being improved.

“I invited him to join the Tiger Cell because young people working on technology-based conservation solutions should get opportunities early,” Jena said. “Avi Mohan is a child prodigy with exceptional skills in artificial intelligence and is contributing meaningfully to our work.”