Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students (wyofile.com) 23
"Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park," reports Interesting Engineering, "to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.". Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as "kind of a Frankenbird." (SFGate shows one of the robot birds charging up with a solar panel... "Recorded breeding calls are played at the scene, with clucking and cooing beginning at 5 a.m. each day.")
Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless." Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said...
A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs...
The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds... During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges.
Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless." Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said...
A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs...
The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds... During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges.
Life imitating art (Score:4, Funny)
This time, the birds really aren't real!
https://birdsarentreal.com/pag... [birdsarentreal.com]
So get this. (Score:1)
Robot birds are declining, so students built real birds, which attracts the robot birds? Incredible!!!
Re: (Score:2)
This was also partially the plot of that Hoppers film, but with beavers instead of birds.
Re: (Score:2)
Who writes their tweets?
Songbird Magnet (Score:2)
I used to have a "Songbird Magnet" (manufactured by Bird-X), which was just a speaker that would blast out purple martin song at scheduled times to attempt to get a colony to nest. It never worked for me, but surely that's all this needs to be? A box with a speaker in it and some rudimentary sensors? Why does it have to look like a bird?
But depressingly, maybe this is just a prelude to Blade Runner. "Do you like our owl?"
Re:Songbird Magnet (Score:4, Interesting)
What an ugly robot model with those huge yellow sacs on the front. Unfortunately, that is very close to what these strange birds actually look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There is a population of sage grouse near the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory that is slowly declining due to wild fires and natural changes to their habitat. Similar but not identical to what is happening near Grand Teton.
https://species.idaho.gov/wp-c... [idaho.gov]
Obligatory (Score:1)
Birds get robot waifus and hasbandos (Score:2)
What could go wrong?
What real birds? (Score:2)
I thought the last real bird died in 2001?
If you want birds, stop killing the bugs (Score:3)
The decline in bird population is due to crowding and reduction of food sources. Birds are often insectivores. If you want more birds, stop directly killing the bugs, and stop creating mono-culture ecosystems which cannot support bugs (grass lawns).
Crowding is harder. Crowding birds together again reduces food sources, but also increases disease spread. Adding greenspaces would at lease help there. Drawing birds where you want them seems like exactly what not to do.
Misleading headline (Score:2)
Boy, are the real ones gonna be pissed (Score:2)
When they try to get busy with the robot ones.
Cool! (Score:2)
They get to do MUCH cooler things in high school today than when I was there in the '70s. I envy the opportunities they have, and feel badly about the world we're leaving them.
The Truman Show! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like how we raise children now.. (Score:2)
Give them an ipad.
Great.
wat (Score:1)
"Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors"
Sigh. Can we somehow stop clowns from writing tech articles?
Do androids dream of electric grouse? (Score:1)
And does anyone else find stories like this to be inexorably easing humanity down the glide path towards our Blade Runner future?
Stupid Chickens (Score:2)
Hiking in the Jackson/Yellowstone region in the 1960s and 1970s we called Sage Grouse "Stupid Chickens" because their behavior seemed completely anti-survival. If one was on the trail you had to go around it or push it out of the way, because if you stepped on one, well, you'd just step on it. They would neither attack nor evade -- they seemed completely oblivious to anything happening around them. I'm not surprised that the population is declining; if anything I'm surprised there's still a population.
The road to hell... (Score:2)
Sounds like a great way to kill a lot of birds. Birds leave an area because it can't support them. Students trick birds into thinking they can survive there. Birds come back, get continually gaslit by the healthy looking robots. Birds get too weak and die.
This sometimes actually happens when babies or injured animals imprint on their artificial or human caretakers. They refuse to follow their natural instincts which their caretaker doesn't have. Sometimes they die because of it. Will it happen with t