For the protection of airports in the Netherlands created a bird-robots

I remember that I was very impressed with Robert Sheckley’s “Guardian Bird” story that I read in the adolescent NF. The robot bird described there seemed a very distant future, practically impracticable in our time project. Time passed, and technology brought the same future, making it real.

The other day the Dutch company introduced two models of robot birds. True, these robots do not know how to send an electric charge to a person or animal, but they were also created for another purpose. Namely - to protect airports and air transport from birds, annoying civil aviation.
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According to statistics, about once a day, somewhere in the world, an airliner must make an emergency landing due to interference in the form of birds. Sometimes the birds damage the details of the aircraft, sometimes they simply do not allow them to take off, due to the nature of the collective of birds. As far as I remember, even one of the launches of the Shuttle shuttle (or the launch of another spacecraft) failed because the woodpeckers damaged the thermal protection. In general, birds cause quite tangible financial damage to airlines, in addition, all this is fraught with accidents with human victims (although accidents caused by birds are very rare).

To scare away birds on the airfields, they set up an alarm system, stuffed animals, hire special workers. But it helps a little.

As for the project of the Dutch company, two robot birds were presented, one model - a copy of a falcon, the other - a copy of an eagle (for scaring larger birds). The dimensions of the "falcon" - 58 cm in length and 120 cm wingspan. The size of the "eagle" - twice as much. The body is printed on a 3D printer, fiberglass is used to strengthen the design.



Operators control this robot. In the future, it is planned to make the robot birds autonomous so that the person is minimally involved in the project. After the start of the test, a 75% decrease in the number of birds at the airport where the tests were conducted was recorded. And even those birds that came back for a long time looked alarmed, these birds tried to look out for a falcon / eagle in the sky.

In general, the guardian birds have already gone to work, so to speak. Let's wait for a model with an electric discharger or a laser gun?



Via dailymail