Oxford researchers use hedgehog crash test dummies to limit lawnmower injuries | Hacker News Reader

Oxford researchers use hedgehog crash test dummies to limit lawnmower injuries

bbc.co.uk

41 pointsedward22 comments

“The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,

Killed. It had been in the long grass.”

No idea how to post poetry in HN. Rest of the Larkin poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48423/the-mower-56d22...

That's called a poem?

Yes, it's quite nice.

Can I get my money back?

Sure, just send me all your baking details? Trust me, I'm a Nigerian Prince.

How do you define a poem?

For me a poem is a short textual art form that captures an author’s feeling or induced one in me.

I know it’s not perfect: it doesn’t include novels in verse and has no mention of a particular poetic register, that I cannot define but I know it when I see it.

How would uou not define a poem?

thanks, I hadn't read that poem before, and it was a good one.

My understanding is that hedgehogs are crepuscular, so unless your robot mower is running at night, I'm not sure why this is such a specific test case. Applaud the overall thought, as hedgehogs are in need of protections. According to my friends who have hedgehogs in their area, they really only come out in the day if there's a problem, IE: poor health, starvation - something not right.

The aren't quite as rigid as that, baby hedgehogs come out in the day sometimes, and we had hedgehogs loudly having sex at 11am recently in the garden. In the summer the come out a bit before dusk quite regularly.

Here in Poland, it’s extremely common to see hedgehogs during the day. Unfortunately also a common sight to see them dead on major country roads.

> so unless your robot mower is running at nigh

Some people do in fact run their robot mower after dark.

Great idea, since they don't have a fight or flight reaction! I wonder if some kind of simple thermal camera/PIR sensor could be useful here.

Tangentially related I'm curious if it might be possible to distinguish hedgehogs that come into our garden based on their spines (I understand their paw-prints are similar to human fingerprints, but recording that automatically might be trickier!).

This is like expecting Teslas to swerve for squirrels.

A 2-tonne vehicle making a dangerous manoeuvre and risking human lives for a squirrel is the same as an incredibly slow-moving, 5-10kg piece of plastic stopping its motor, in a garden, to protect a species vulnerable to extinction?

Not to mention, nobody wants to clean up a mangled animal from their garden, or spend hours getting it to a vet or rescue centre.

If you really want your hedgehogs, put your forests back.

The Scots have plenty of hedgehogs they don't want.

As a hypothetical owner of both a Tesla and an autonomous mower, i would not want my Tesla to swerve (at least in any way that might endanger me or other humans) for a squirrel, whereas I would probably want my autonomous mower to "swerve" to avoid a hedgehog, if not because i like little animals then just because i wouldn't want to clear up entrails off of my lawn

Out of curiosity, does your autonomous mower behave as idiotically has a autonomous vacuum like a Roomba? For a vacuum, that's okay, but for something on my lawn, I'd hate to see what the patterns in the grass would look like.

I clearly have no experience with one of these things, and just taking the worst of one and (most probably) improperly applying it to something else.

These auto mowers are so light they generally don’t make much of a pattern in the grass at all

It's not the weight of the mower that makes the patterns. it's the direction of the suction, the direction of the rotation and cut. Sure, the wheels can leave a depression, but it's the cut that is important.

There is no suction afaik, and they cut so regularly (my neighbours use it daily) so the pattern have no time to settle.

No, not at all.

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