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Caltech Engineers Teach Drone How to Herd Birds Away From Airport Airspaces

Birds, either flying separately or in flocks, can cause serious trouble for airplane pilots. A good example is the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson,” when pilots were forced to land in the Hudson River after striking a flock of geese right after takeoff.
Birds cause serious trouble to airplane pilots when they enter the airport airspace 11 photos
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The incident has inspired engineers at Caltech to create a new algorithm that would allow them to have a single drone effectively herd an entire flock out of airport airspaces. Current options for that involve using piloted drones or trained falcons, but they are more expensive and less efficient.

Soon-Jo Chung, associate professor of aerospace and Bren Scholar in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, JPL research scientist have created this new algorithm that allows an off-the-shelf quadrotor drone to herd an entire flock of birds. Their findings are published in a study in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Techxplore reports.

The trick with herding is that the flock must take heed of the external threat and act collectively, Chung explains. That means that each motion of the drone has to be very precise, influencing one single bird to move in a given direction, which then communicates to the bird closest to it, and so forth. If the motion isn’t precise, birds will scare off and act separately, instead of as a unit.

Chung admits that what happened with Flight 1549 was a happy occurrence, but the situation might turn tragic if it happens again.

“So I started looking into ways to protect airspace from birds by leveraging my research areas in autonomy and robotics,” he says. “When herding birds away from an airspace, you have to be very careful in how you position your drone. If it's too far away, it won't move the flock. And if it gets too close, you risk scattering the flock and making it completely uncontrollable. That's difficult to do with a piloted drone.”

For the time being, the algorithm works only for one drone, with its effectiveness limited by the size and number of the birds the drone is herding. Chung is hoping they will be able to modify it to allow several drones to act at the same time, herding multiple flocks.
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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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