The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with RailTel Corporation of India Limited on Monday.

The memorandum was signed to install an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to avert train-elephant collisions.

This initiative of installation of IDS in important sections has been taken by the NFR to prevent and detect the movement of wild animals, especially elephants, approaching the tracks.

The MoU was signed by NF Railway's Chief Communication Engineer G R Das and RailTel's Eastern region Executive Director Zakir Siddiqui.

The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and existing optical fibres will be used as sensors to identify the movements of wild animals at locations and alert control offices, station masters, gatemen and loco pilots.

It uses fibre optic-based acoustic system working on the principle of dialysis scattering phenomenon to sense the real-time presence of elephants on the track. The AI-based software can monitor un-usual movements up to a stretch of 60 km.