Bird watchers in the UK were outraged at seeing a drone fly in and break up a recurring mass flight phenomenon by starlings known as murmurations. The interruption last week near Brighton’s pier was also denounced for the dangers that the craft’s propellers posed to the performing creatures.
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Tourists flock the Falkland Islands for their stunning landscape, beaches, and magnificent bird life. But the scientists who routinely need to visit the rocky, uninhabited outer islands to keep an eagle eye on bird colonies often do that with an albatross around their neck (well, not literally).
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Intel hopes its new, cutting-edge 21st technology will make drones at least as smart as bugs, maybe even birds.
Intel envisions biological drones.
The company is installing its new Loihi chips into drones, hoping to give them capabilities approaching animals.
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One of the peskiest birds in the suburbs of Perth, Australia, is the Corella. They rip up irrigation systems, cables, and destroys trees, but can drones scare them off? Perth doctor Jean-Paul Orsini thinks they could be a possible solution to the problem.
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The pilot of a small single-propeller airplane stays calm after a bird crashes through its windshield, sending large pieces of broken plexiglass flying through the cockpit. If you watch the slow-motion (video below) carefully you can actually see the pilot’s glasses flying through the air. The pilot remains very calm even though he seems injured and continues to land the aircraft safely.
You cannot help but wonder what would have happened if a drone had hit the airplane instead.
This week a new research report has been released by a team from the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) that concludes that drones colliding with large manned aircraft will likely cause more structural damage than birds with the same weight for a given impact speed.
Whereas birds have a soft mass and tissue, drones are made of harder materials and contain more compact mass, such as batteries and motors, which are likely to cause more damage during a collision with a manned airplane.
