Robotic Falcons to Deter Bird Strikes

 Novel Application.  might also deter birds eating key crops. 

Robotic Falcon Designed to Help Prevent Bird Strikes, By CNN, October 28, 2022

Collisions between birds and aircraft, known as bird strikes, can result in aircraft damage, as well as delays and cancellation of flights, costing the International Civil Aviation Organization a reported $1.4 billion each year.

Researchers at the University of Groningen (UG) in the Netherlands have developed a robotic peregrine falcon in a bid to prevent birds from colliding with aircraft.

The ground-controlled RobotFalcon imitates a falcon's movements to ward off birds, using propellers on its wings and a camera on its head to facilitate a "first-person view while steering."  ... 

UG's Rolf Storms said tests near the Dutch city of Workum showed the robot cleared flocks from fields within five minutes of taking off, with half the sites cleared within 70 seconds; a drone only managed to clear 80% of the birds from fields in the same time.  ... 

From CNN

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Drones Scaring Birds

Makes sense, fairly obvious .... Effective?

Drones Could Scare Birds Off Agricultural Fields

Washington State University, Scott Weybright, June 1, 2022

An autonomous system developed by Washington State University (WSU) researchers can patrol agricultural fields around the clock to drive away birds that feed on the crops. The system uses cameras to detect the presence of birds, and automatically deploys drones to scare them off. Tests showed the drones' motion and whirring noises were sufficient to get the birds to depart, but WSU's Manoj Karkee observed, "We could make drones look like predators, or have reflective propellers that are really shiny. All of these working together would likely keep birds away from those vineyards and fields." ... 

Identifying Birds from Behind

Not banned for bias yet.   So at least we can continue to fine tune accuracy as needed and apply it to studies to help the avian world.

Birdwatching AI can recognise individual birds from behind
in NewScientist   By Michael Le Page

Artificial intelligence has been trained to recognise individual birds, which is more than we humans are capable of. The system is being developed for biologists studying wild animals, but could be adapted so that people can identify individual birds in their surroundings.

André Ferreira at the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, started the project while studying how individual sociable weavers contribute to their colonies. This is normally done by putting coloured tags on their legs and sitting by nests to watch them, which is very time-consuming. Ferreira tried filming the colonies instead, but often the coloured tags weren’t visible in the footage, so he and his colleagues turned to AI. ... "