Japan deploys robot wolves and AI drones to keep bears at bay

[Undertaker92]

Japan is dealing with a record wave of bear attacks and sightings this year, and rural communities have turned to some genuinely inventive tech solutions to cope. A Hokkaido company called Ohta Seiki makes an animatronic scarecrow called Monster Wolf, with glowing red eyes, swiveling joints and over fifty different sounds including growls and human voices, loud enough to be heard nearly a kilometer away. Orders have tripled recently, with the company already receiving around fifty orders this year alone and customers now waiting two to three months for delivery

Gifu prefecture has taken a different approach, flying drones since November that emit barking dog sounds and set off fireworks to scare bears away from orchards and residential areas. Separately, at least one manufacturer spent months training an AI camera, originally built to detect humans, on thousands of bear images so it can now recognize bears specifically and send photo alerts straight to customers' phones. Japan has also deployed troops in some northern regions to help with trapping and culling as attacks have spread across 21 prefectures

Experts point to a mix of factors behind the surge, including bear populations roughly tripling since 2012 due to reduced hunting, climate change cutting into natural food supplies like acorns, and rural depopulation leaving more abandoned farmland for bears to wander into. Curious what people think about these tech based solutions, genuinely clever adaptation or just a stopgap for a bigger underlying problem

Japan Using Ai Drones And Wolf Robots To Keep Bears At Bay C2E Spcedition.cnn.com