Autonomous drone technology herds birds away from airports

The development of the algorithm – described in a study in IEEE Transactions on Robotics - was inspired by the so-called 2009 "Miracle on the Hudson" incident, when US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese shortly after take-off and was forced to land in the Hudson River off Manhattan.

"The passengers on Flight 1549 were only saved because the pilots were so skilled," said Soon-Jo Chung, principal investigator on the drone herding project. "It made me think that next time might not have such a happy ending. So I started looking into ways to protect airspace from birds by leveraging my research areas in autonomy and robotics."

Airports are currently protected from birds either by trained falcons or piloted drones. However, these strategies can be costly or—in the case of the hand-piloted drone—unreliable, said Chung.

"When herding birds away from an airspace, you have to be very careful in how you position your drone,” he explained. “If it's too far away, it won't move the flock. And if it gets too close, you risk scattering the flock and making it completely uncontrollable. That's difficult to do with a piloted drone."