Remember that plane that landed in the Hudson which resulted in a Tom Hanks movie? That whole saga started with a flock of Canada Geese getting shredded through the plane\u2019s jet engines, destroying them. By \u201cthem,\u201d I mean both the birds and the engines, but for the purpose of this story, the latter is probably most relevant.
Birds at airports can be a terrifying ordeal, so you\u2019d be unsurprised to hear that airports pay a pretty penny to keep the area around an airport clear. Clear Flight Solutions \u2018 Robird is a drone that flaps its wings and scares the bejesus out of other birds to keep aviation safe.
Traditionally, airports, fruit farms at harvest season and others have chased off birds by using a highly skilled falconer to fly a trained bird of prey in an area. Clear Flight Solutions\u2019 Robird is the remote-controllable, doesn\u2019t-need-feeding version of the same idea.
\u201cThe theory is simple,\u201d Wessel Straatman, one of the engineers behind the product tells me. \u201cBirds know that birds of prey are territorial. When we fly Robird in an area, other birds learn that it\u2019s dangerous to be there. As a result, they\u2019ll avoid it, solving the problem for a period of time.\u201d
\u201cWe can actually drive birds in the direction we want, much like a sheep dog can be used to control sheep,\u201d the company\u2019s operations manager Robert Jonker tells me. \u201cIt works incredibly well.\u201d
The company has been working on perfecting a wing-flapping drone for 15 years, trialling its product in its native Netherlands. Now, it\u2019s ready to go international.
\u201cWe don\u2019t sell the Robird as products,\u201d Straatman says of the 3D printed, hand-assembled drones, \u201cbut we offer their use as a service.\u201d
The company is tight-lipped about how much it costs to hire its services, and is reluctant to share its precise pricing model.
\u201cEvery job is different, requiring us to travel somewhere. We use two people on each job: An observer and a pilot, and of course there are other considerations too, depending on the specifics of each assignment,\u201d Jonker explains. He eventually suggests that a day of having a Robird scaring birds out of an area will set you back $1,000 \u2013 $1,500.
In theory, operating a fleet of Robirds is scaleable; you could build the drones faster than you could train a falcon, and you don\u2019t have to feed it hamburgers, keep it warm or sing it lullabies when it\u2019s its bed-time (obviously, yours sincerely knows a lot about the care and feeding of birds of prey).
In practice, I wonder whether needing a two-man crew and not selling the birds to pest control agencies may prove to limit the company\u2019s growth. Especially, perhaps, because the logistics of serving the 16,000 square mile country of the Netherlands will be somewhat different to having to potentially cover 3,800,000 square miles in the U. S.
\u201cWe think we are ready to scale and we already have a lot of interest from military and international civil airports here in the U. S.,\u201d Jonker tells me. He explains that Clear Flight Solutions would team up with a local partner who has the relevant licence to operate these types of drones for legal compliance purposes.
But really, all of this is just an excuse so I can post the video below. Let\u2019s face it, what could be more awesome than a drone flying like a bird?<\/p>\n