Students give scarecrow a brain

By: Isabel Mascareñas

In the classical movie, “The Wizard of Oz” the characters were heading to see the Great Oz hoping he’d grant a wish. The tin man wanted a heart, the lion wanted courage and the scarecrow wanted a brain.

Mornings on this fish farm appear pretty quiet but mornings are when farmer John Skidmore says predators try to eat his profits.

John Skidmore, Owner of Golden Pond Tropicals::

“Generally 3 to 5 percent lost a year due to birds…The birds we have problems with stay year around, snowy egrets, white egrets, great blue heron.”

Dogs and even bottle rockets don't seem to work. How about a scarecrow, a scarecrow with a brain?!

Francisco Blanquicet, USF Engineering Student:

“It has a camera in the helmet looks at certain area sense bird coming it either shoots water or plays sounds. We know birds not attractive too.

Meet J-J, named by the USF Engineering students who built him.

Blanquicet::

“We came up with idea having intelligent scarecrow help farmers keep birds away without the need to shoot the birds.”

Jimal Ramsamooj, USF Engineering Student:

“ It's going by its gut instinct because its brains are in its stomach basically.”

The scarecrow is pretty smart it can tell the difference between foe and friend.

Ramsamooj:

“The idea of the vest, the farmer puts on the vest the system will not go off find the orange in the vest using the image processing it disables both the sprinkler and the sound.

J-J the intelligent scarecrow also e-mails or calls the farmer's cell phone when it's completed a high-tech scare.

Skidmore:

“As a class project it's fascinating. It has the potential to go a long way.”

The USF Engineering students are looking at marketing the scarecrow but first they hope to win Microsoft's international contest called, “Windows Challenge.”

USF is one of only 18 American teams out of 200 worldwide competing in the final round.

The students will learn on May 14^th if they've made the cut. If they do, Francisco Blanquicet, Jimal Ramsamooj, Albert Ng, Scott Werner and their professor Dr. Ken Christensen will travel to Washington State this summer to compete for the top prize.