This could also be used at landfills to scare away seagulls.
Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way of thinking about altitude is how many mistakes you have time to recover from before hitting the ground. The higher you are the safer you are - you haven't crashed until you hit the ground. For a single-engine plane, 500' AGL depending on the plane and wind is enough to make a 180° turn and land on the takeoff runway if its clear. 1000' AGL will let you do it on just about any suitable surface at the airport…
What kind of birds fly above 20,000 feet???
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. As a society we've been pretty cavalier about algorithmic control. Which can work well for a lot of things. But probably shouldn't be trusted (without a TON of validation and regulation, as we've done over decades with airliners) with controlling stuff that can injure people or dama…
> Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. All of these things are way harder than simply buying a drone yourself and doing illegal things with it.
Except if the drone you hack has the "access code" to let it fly in sensitive areas.
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. All of these things are way harder than simply buying a drone yourself and doing illegal things with it.
Except if the drone you hack has the "access code" to let it fly in sensitive areas.
Drones by default have that "access code" now. There are guidelines/rules to generally keep us away from airports, but it's not a physical restriction for the device.
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#85This very much smells like fluff piece. Tech for obstacle avoidance is not yet mature to the level where it would be safe to have autonomous drones near bird path and potential busy air traffic. Add battery restrictions, wind, weather etc and you get nice vaporware demo.
My off-the-shelf $1k drone can fly fine in heavy wind and light rain. With minor mods, it could probably handle heavier rain too. Any wind it can't handle is going to discourage birds too.
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#86Considering 15 minute flight time, 2 hour battery recharging time, and several miles runway circumference, I guestimate you would need around a 100-200 drone system to maintain constant surveillance around a medium size airport.
Why would the battery charging time matter if you had a few batteries for each drone? You just manually swap or automate that process.
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. As a society we've been pretty cavalier about algorithmic control. Which can work well for a lot of things. But probably shouldn't be trusted (without a TON of validation and regulation, as we've done over decades with airliners) with controlling stuff that can injure people or dama…
You can already do that with your own manually controlled drones(surprisingly, no one has done this yet). There is no need to hack the airports drones.
manually controlled drones
How about we just call them "remote-controlled aircraft"... which is what they were called before the whole "drone" fad came along (and "drone" itself used to imply at least some autonomous capability.)
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sucking a bird into a jet engine, obviously. Was this a rhetorical question? The jet engine is mounted to a plane. It's designed to withstand bird strikes without exploding - they literally blast frozen turkeys into it with an air cannon - but they can still cause engine out situations that result in crashes or emergency landings and risk the lives of the hundreds of people on board. Not to mention the huge repair co…
I like how there are three different interpretations of the question.
...and that the "third" one is also amusingly absurd.
(Imagine a "bird-vacuuming drone.")
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is downside risk: drones get hacked, or someone figures out how to make the drones fly into planes, or herd birds TOWARD planes. As a society we've been pretty cavalier about algorithmic control. Which can work well for a lot of things. But probably shouldn't be trusted (without a TON of validation and regulation, as we've done over decades with airliners) with controlling stuff that can injure people or dama…
You can already do that with your own manually controlled drones(surprisingly, no one has done this yet). There is no need to hack the airports drones.
There has benn one recorded accidental collision between a Phantom and a military helicopter (the drone exploded) and there is one guy that posted a video of a freestyle drone flying above incoming airliner on landing approach (which outraged the community).
Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
#90This could also be used at landfills to scare away seagulls.
Unless eating from landfills harms the seagulls, why? What precious things are the seagulls taking from landfills, and why do we need landfills to remain perfectly preserved?