US Army deploys plastic coyotes attached to mini four-wheelers
Sometimes high -tech solutions are not the best way to solve a problem. The American army has apparently reached this achievement while exploring new methods to dissuade birds and other “problematic fauna” from air bases. The soldiers initially planned to use the Boston Dynamics punctual robot to scare the intruders, but they quickly realized that it was not fast enough to effectively keep critters.
A much more efficient and affordable solution was in the form of three lures of life -size plastic coyote mounted on autonomous vehicles the size of a toy. These Watch Cyborg dogs, ready to make their debut in the naval air bases in the future, have an appropriate name: “Coyote Rovers”.
“Everything comes down to frightening tactics …”, wrote the Research and Development Center of the American Army (ERDC) in a LinkedIn post this year. ERDC published a photo of the Rovers on a lawn with the Blue Angels of the Navy fighter in the background.
Small birds can cause big problems
Damage caused by fauna is a major concern for the military. In 2014, four Air Force soldiers were killed after a herd of Canadian geese stolen from the windshield of their helicopter, hitting the unconscious pilot and co-pilot. Another bird then struck the helicopter nose and disabled its stabilization system, finally sending it to crash. It was not a unique incident. During the period of only 10 years between 2007 and 2016, the US Air Force reported 45,440 fauna strikes which collectively led to $ 251 million in damages. The Air Force even devoted an entire team called The Bird / Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) responsible for mitigating these disturbances. This team previously used hawks to keep seagulls away and helped design a radar system that brings in potential levels of bird strike intensity.
Bash members have been working with wildlife research biologists for five years on the Coyote Rover project. Certain air bases, according to a Army time The report had previously used real dogs to keep the fauna away, but found that they could be unpredictable. The first tests of the team using the Spot robot failed because the high -tech robot could not load the annoying fauna at fairly fast speeds. Birds and other wild animals were simply not afraid when Spot approached them. In some cases, the animals would still not move even after the quadruped hit them.
“What we discovered quickly is, because it had a speed of approach so slow, that it made more of the animals away once it got closer to them, that it did not really frighten it,” said the Biologist of the Wildlife Erdc Research Jong Jung Army time.
Low technology, lower costs, best results
The Rover Coyote is relatively low. The Rovers themselves are four-wheeled driving vehicles made by Traxxas X-Maxx, a company better known for producing controlled radio cars. The coyote lures attached to it would have come from a forest supplier. Although simple appearance, the rover can reach speeds up to 20 miles per hour. This rhythm, combined with the idiotic coyote doll, is apparently realistic enough to scare animals nearby. In total, Coyote Rover units would have cost between $ 2,500 and $ 3,000. Only one robot, however, would cost $ 74,500.
Although always technically prototypes, ERDC claims that he has already successfully demonstrated the capacities of Rovers in demonstrations organized in the Air Naval Air Field and Pensacola stations in Florida and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Researchers also seek to improve the future iterations of coyote bots by adding automatic learning capacities that should allow them to navigate independently to and from charging stations.
ERDC also sees potential roles for coyotes beyond aerodromes. Shea Hammond, research biologist focused on the robotic characterization of the battlefield and operational environments for the ERDC, said Army timeS she thinks that Rovers could one day be used to remotely identify bird species and other wild animals in the deployed areas. They could even be deployed on locks and dams across the country that are maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.
For the moment, however, the Coyote Rover unit is limited to Scarecrow Duty.
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