Why settle for a robot when you can have a robot coyote? That seems to be the thinking of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), which is developing a cybernetic prairie predator to keep airfields clear of hazardous wildlife.
One constant problem for airfields is the presence of birds and other wildlife that pose a serious threat to aircraft and field operations. Birds are the biggest hazard because of the damage they can do when they're sucked into engines, slam into windscreens, and impact control surfaces. This can be so severe that the US Civil Air Administration once built a chicken gun that used compressed air to fire bird carcasses at airframes to simulate avian impacts.
In addition to birds, other wildlife like rabbits and deer can wander onto runways or damage equipment by foraging, burrowing, nesting, or relieving themselves. To prevent this, airfield operators have employed all sorts of countermeasures, including aerial drones, hawks, falcons, dogs, lights, and even gas-operated cannons to scare fauna away.
Now, the ERDC is working with wildlife biologists Dr. Stephen Hammond and Dr. Jacob Jung along with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) to develop robot coyotes to help with the job.
Why coyotes? If you've ever lived in close proximity to a pack of them like I have, you don't need to ask because potential prey give them a very wide berth if they don't want to be lunch.
The result of five years of development, the Coyote Rovers, as they are officially called, began life as a Boston Dynamics Spot quadruped robot, but this turned out to be too slow to intimidate the local wildlife, so they were replaced with four-wheeled Traxxas X-Maxx motorized cars capable of reaching 20 mph (32 km/h). Adding plastic coyote dummies to ride on the platforms provided them with the right balance of cute and alarming at a total cost of about US$3,000 each.
The robo-coyotes have been tested at a number of military airfields, including Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, famous as the home of the Blue Angels aerobatics team, Fort Campbell, Tennessee, and Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Florida. The prototypes may seem like simple radio-controlled cars with canine accessories, but the eventual goal is to equip them with the capability of other drones, such as programmed routes and exclusion zones, adaptation to rough terrain, the ability to recharge themselves for days of autonomous operation, and the ability to identify specific species of birds or animals and adjust for the appropriate deterrent tactics.
However, how the robot coyotes will take on robot roadrunners has yet to be determined, since that will require advanced capabilities to use catapults, giant magnets, rocket packs, high explosives, and painting realistic tunnels on rock faces.
Source: US Army Corps of Engineers via LinkedIn
@Username Agreed, that last paragraph is perfect... ACME approved!