Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously
techxplore.com
techxplore.com
However, I doubt this would stop another near-disaster like Cactus 1549. They hit geese on climbout at nearly 3000 feet [0]. Thats pretty far outside of what a drone can enforce, or where I'd be comfortable having a drone flying. Current regulations prohibit them flying over 400 ft AGL, except within tight proximity to structures like radio towers.
For background, I'm a private pilot, not an airline guy.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549#Takeoff...
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 damage societies.
There simply isn't money in downing planes, so most people have no incentive to want to do it.
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.)
There's lots of easier ways to hack our fragile ATC system than herding birds at airplanes that I'd worry about first.
Humans may be in some ways easier to influence, but once an algorithm gets big enough, it can be worth attacking if the impact would be huge.
Or did you mean conspiracy theory? Huge difference.
All of these things are way harder than simply buying a drone yourself and doing illegal things with it.
I remember hearing something about how many small aircraft incidents occur at low altitude on takeoff or landing, partly because it's harder to recover from a stall condition (perhaps engine-out as well?) at low altitude...
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 - other runways, taxiways, grass clearings adjacent to them, etc - and give you a few seconds to be confused before deciding that you need to make an emergency landing.
Most birds fly quite low, and drone-based bird abatement at airports would be a safety win if done right (DO-178-B style software quality), but I've heard of bird strikes above 20,000', and been taught to expect that you're never flying above _all_ the birds.
Edited to reply directly to your 3000' comment like I meant to: At 3000' AGL, you can almost always glide to a safe landing point, unless you're over mountains or a dense urban area. But unless you happen to already be near an airport, you probably won't be able to glide to one. Glide ratios much higher than 10:1 are uncommon, so thats 5.7 statute miles. Lots of places are more than 5.7 miles from an airport.
Unlucky bastard. You think you're safe, 7 miles above the earth, far from any predator, when WHAM. At least it was a quick death.
Don’t you think they can’t learn that just like you did?
Of course the engineering and planning that went into the aircraft's construction had nothing to do with it, nor did the countless government regulations dictating safety equipment and training.
These sorts of "miracles" happen rather regularly. A plane crashes near a runway totaling the aircraft, but everyone walks away. Piloting is part of the equation, but pilots stand atop an enormous pyramid of other people each contributing to flight safety. See that flight in Canada that crashed but did not catch fire. A couple decades ago that would have ended very differently.
Human interaction ends up being the wildcard
Now, I only get a little of that from your comment, just enough to remind me of this impression. Where does the tacit resentment come from? Anyone else experience this?
Sully was a hero! Is a hero! And he gets, and deserves, a lot of credit. But he was the first to say that he was just doing his job, and he means it literally. He and his copilot worked together (very effectively) to apply the proper checklists and procedures in order to effect a safe water landing and evacuation.
Chasing requires fleeing. If the bird knows from experience that the drone won't hurt him, then why would he flee from it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migratory_Bird_Treaty_Act_of_1...
The problem there is that the bird has no time to react. Planes are way faster and actually suck air.
Come to think of it, birds don't even make enough of an effort to avoid existing aircraft that are large, loud, and do pose a threat to them, which is why these drones are being developed in the first place.
Oh boy, there goes a future evening...
1. Drones don't need to always be flying. Flocks of birds turn up on radar quite a lot and I don't see some early detection system for birds as impossible.
2. The flight paths for migrating birds can be predicted, reducing the need for a high presence in some directions.
3. 15 minutes of flight time is low, with some super big LiPo batteries for high performance drones you're easily getting an hour. The benefit of these large batteries is that they can be charged quickly too (charge rate based on power offered).
4. They are relatively fail safe, if the drones stop functioning you just go back to not having any real support.
5. It's likely that with some additional work, they could work on calculating the conditions that cause flocks of birds to fly towards scary sounding planes. I imagine it to be quite likely that they will only fly from certain directions given wind conditions, etc.
Maybe a ring around the tips of the blades, and the blades double as spokes. They'd be ugly, but birds would fly into them less, and power output would get slightly smoothed by the weight shifted to the exterior of the wind wheel.
For instance, in Rome during Fall Season there are thousands of birds that fly by the city, taking nearby shelter in trees. It was awful walking down roadways, floor was slippery and poop was everywhere
Airplanes are huge chunks of metal that make a deafening roar. Grown men are rightly afraid of coming near one.
Not exactly. Bird strikes are a huge problem especially in "congested" environments, aka humans sealing up more and more former forest/agricultural land with concrete... and thus forcing the birds to airports as they usually have spacious amounts of grass land with ample space for insects.
There's a reason why bird strikes are most prevalent in city airports, simply because the birds don't have anywhere else to go. Worst case IIRC was the plane that emergency-landed in an NYC river due to colliding with an entire flock of geese.
In absolute numbers, per FAA there were 13k bird strike events in 2016, with 262 deaths+279 injuries from 1990-2013 (so about 11 deaths/year on average): https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/wildlife/faq/
Obviously most birdstrikes are harmless but everyone fears a scenario like in 2009 in NYC.
From wikipedia:
"The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reported 65,139 bird strikes for 2011–14, and the Federal Aviation Authority counted 177,269 wildlife strike reports on civil aircraft between 1990 and 2015, growing 38% in 7 years from 2009 to 2015. Birds accounted for 97%"
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 costs all that incurs.
I value the safety of the people aboard that plane far above the comfort of the birds that would like to live at the airport, to the extent that scaring millions of birds is worth doing if it's likely to save the lives of a couple hundred people. Though that's getting pretty close to the threshold at which it ceases to be worthwhile.
Also, if I was in the bird's shoes, I would much prefer to be scared by a drone than ingested into the jet engine...
(Imagine a "bird-vacuuming drone.")
Do you want seagulls to not eat, never eat? Do you want seagulls to be killed?
Is the water supply adjacent to the landfills? Will the seagulls not poop in the water supply if they didn't eat from landfills, or is pooping in the water supply not a problem as long as the seagulls haven't eaten from a landfill?
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