A flying robot inspired by a male peregrine falcon can scare away flocks of birds in fields within 5 minutes of flying over and keep them away for up to four hours, on average.
Birds can eat crops on farmland or damage aircraft at airports if they collide with them by accident. As a result, several methods have been developed to deter them from congregating at these sites. These include traditional scarecrows, recordings of bird distress calls or lethal approaches involving guns or trained birds of prey.
Now, at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and colleagues have created an artificial predator 鈥� Robotfalcon 鈥� to scare away flocks of birds on the ground without harming them. The robot resembles a peregrine falcon in size, shape and colouration. It has a wingspan of 70 centimetres, weighs 245 grams and flies at 15 metres per second.
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To test how well it works, the team flew either the robot or a standard drone in a straight line, at a constant altitude, above flocks of birds that had landed in agricultural fields in the north of the Netherlands.
Robotfalcon was tested on 54 separate flocks, and cleared all the targeted birds in each flock within 5 minutes. The standard drone 鈥� which was tested on 56 separate flocks 鈥� deterred 80 per cent of the targeted birds within the same time period. What鈥檚 more, targeted birds were more likely to land in the fields again in tests with the drone rather than with the Robotfalcon.
When the researchers compared how long the Robotfalcon kept the target birds away from fields with recordings of distress calls, they found that the robot kept starlings, lapwings and gulls away for at least twice as long. However, corvids stayed away equally as long in response to both methods.
The robot could be used by farms across the world, says at the Federal Polytechnic Bida in Nigeria, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the study.
However, the current prototype has a battery life of just 15 minutes, and the Robotfalcon requires a human operator.
鈥淎utomating the method of detection and control mechanism may be necessary鈥� to reduce human听intervention and stress and increase the efficiency of the听deterrence,鈥� says Suleiman.
Reference: bioRxiv,
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