A headless robot the size of a Labrador retriever will be disguised as a coyote or fox to ward off migrating birds and other wildlife at Alaska’s second-largest airport, a state agency said.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has named the new robot Aurora and announced it will be based at Fairbanks Airport to “enhance and improve safety and operations.” Anchorage Daily News reported.
The Transportation Department released a Video The robot climbs rocks, goes up stairs and does something like dancing while green lights flash.
These dancing skills will be put to use this fall during migratory bird season, when Aurora mimics predator-like movements to deter birds and other wildlife from perching near aircraft infields.
The plan calls for Aurora to patrol an outdoor area near the runway every hour to prevent harmful encounters between aircraft and wildlife, said Ryan Marlow, program manager with the transportation department.
The robot can be disguised as a coyote or fox by swapping out interchangeable panels, he said.
“The sole purpose of this is to act as a predator and allow us to elicit that response in wildlife without having to use other means,” Marlow told lawmakers last week.
The panels would not be hyper-realistic, and Marlow said the agency decided against using animal fur to ensure Aurora remained waterproof.
The idea of using a robot came after officials rejected a plan to use flying drones to spray a repellent, including grape juice.
Previous deterrence measures included officials releasing pigs at a lake near Anchorage’s airport in the 1990s in the hope that they would eat waterfowl eggs near airplane landing sites.
The test phase in Fairbanks will also see how effective Aurora is as a deterrent to larger animals and how moose and bears react to the robot, Marlow told the Anchorage newspaper.
Fairbanks “is a national leader in wildlife control through the use of Aurora. Several airports across the country have deployed robots for various tasks such as cleaning, security patrols and customer service,” agency spokeswoman Danielle Tessen said in an email to The Associated Press.
In Alaska, wildlife teams are currently deployed to scare birds and other wildlife off runways with loud noises, sometimes using paintball guns.
There were 92 animal strikes near airports across Alaska last year, including 10 in Fairbanks, according to a Federal Aviation Administration database.
Most attacks result in no damage to the aircraft, but Marlow said the encounters could be expensive and dangerous, with rare cases where a bird is sucked into an engine, potentially causing a crash.
An AWACS jet crashed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage in 1995 when it struck a flock of geese, killing 24 people.
If the test proves successful, Marlow said the agency could send similar robots to smaller airports in Alaska, which could be more cost-effective than hiring human deterrence teams.
Aurora, which can be controlled from a table, computer or on an automated schedule, will always have a human operator, he said. It can navigate through rain or snow.
The Boston Dynamics robot cost around $70,000 and was funded with a federal grant.