An Image-Recognition-Triggered Acoustic Bird Repellent Prototype System for Orchards Based on Improved MobileViT-S

To address the lack of bird perception, ineffective output, and sound-source habituation in conventional orchard acoustic bird-repellent devices, this study develops an image-recognition-triggered acoustic bird-repellent prototype system based on an improved MobileViT-S. The system discriminates between “bird” and “no bird” in orchard images and controls an STM32 terminal via TCP Socket to output audible sound and variable-frequency acoustic waves on demand. To improve performance under small-target, foliage-occlusion, and complex-background conditions, multi-scale feature fusion and the CBAM attention mechanism are introduced into MobileViT-S. Ablation experiments show that the improved model achieves an Accuracy of 93.9% and an F1-score of 92.6%. Eighteen days of field operation show that the system can continuously complete image acquisition, bird-presence discrimination, command transmission, acoustic-terminal start/stop control, and switching among three operating modes, thereby verifying the operational feasibility of the system. Because no concurrent control, randomization, or independent replication was included, and because the three acoustic modes were implemented sequentially over time, the present results can only demonstrate the operational feasibility of the prototype system and should not be interpreted as evidence of bird-repelling efficacy or fruit-damage reduction. These effects require further validation through controlled field trials.