Indian engineers have developed a real-time automatic obstacle detection and alert system to help cars avoid colliding with cows on the road, a common sight in this part of the world.

The system uses a dashboard camera and an algorithm that can determine whether an object near the vehicle is an on-road cow and whether or not its movements represent a risk to the vehicle.

A timely audio or visual indicator can then be triggered to nudge the driver to apply the brakes whether or not they have seen the animal.

"The proposed system has achieved an overall efficiency of 80 per cent in terms of cow detection," the researchers said in a study published in the Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

According to researchers Sachin Sharma and Dharmesh Shah of the Department of Electronics & Communication, at Gujarat Technological University in Ahmedabad, the proposed system is a low-cost, highly reliable system which can easily be implemented in automobiles for detection of cow or any other animal after proper training and testing on the highway.

The algorithm requires optimisation and the issue of night-time driving is yet to be addressed, the team said in an article in International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems.