The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) is trialling a headless robot to scare off birds and other wildlife away from airport runways.
Made by Boston Dynamics following the design of a DOT&PF graphic designer, the robot, called Aurora, is about the size of a Labrador Retriever dog and can be disguised as a coyote or fox thanks to interchangeable panels. Employing dynamic moves and seemingly dancing skills, the robot is meant to mimic predator-like movements during migratory bird season to scare off wildlife and thus “enhance and augment airport safety and operations”.
“Designed internally by the talented Alaskan graphic design artist and long-time DOT&PF employee Andrea Deppner, Aurora is adorned with a breathtaking depiction of Alaska’s northern lights”, Alaska DOT&PF said. “Swirls of vibrant colours, ranging from deep indigo to emerald green gracefully dance across Aurora’s metallic frame, perfectly capturing the beauty of the aurora borealis.”
Aurora will be patrolling the perimeter of the Fairbanks International Airport, Alaska’s second largest, every hour, aiming to prevent harmful encounters between planes and wildlife. “The sole purpose of this is to act as a predator and allow for us to invoke that response in wildlife without having to use other means”, Ryan Marlow, a program manager with the DOT&PF told legislators in a meeting on 19 March.
Although it employs cutting-edge technology to help it “manoeuvre over all sorts of terrain”, Aurora will, for now, not make use of AI, but will instead be controlled either via a remote controller, a computer or work on an automated schedule. Regardless of how it gets its instructions, a human handler will pe accompanying Aurora at all times to see how it performs on the field.
During the test period, handlers will also observe how larger animals, like moose and bears, also respond to Aurora. “[Fairbanks] is leading the country with wildlife mitigation through the use of Aurora. Several airports across the country have implemented robots for various tasks such as cleaning, security patrols, and customer service,” DOT&PF spokesperson Danielle Tessen told AP.
If Aurora performs well during the trial, similar robots will be deployed to other airports in Alaska. Whether or not they will come with the same price tag of $70,000 (€ 65,000) is not yet known, but since Aurora, which was funded with a Federal Research Grant, had a custom-made design, robots for smaller airports might have a lower production cost.
Bird strikes are a relatively common occurrence in aviation and can pose significant concerns and risks to aircraft safety, particularly if they involve critical components like engines or windshields. According to a US Federal Aviation Administration database, there were 92 animal strikes near Alaska airports last year, while, in 1995, the AWACS jet clashed with a flock of geese and crashed at the Elmendorf Force Base in Anchorage (Alaska), leaving 24 dead.
Before coming up with Aurora as the solution, the DOT&PF has tried several techniques over the years, including scare shots, pre-recorded bird calls, simulated explosion noises and releasing pigs at a nearby lake in hopes they would eat bird eggs. Most recently, officials have rejected a proposal drones spraying repellents such as grape juice.
