Dr Andrea Griffin from the School of Psychology, expert in animal cognition, has been working with Sydney University School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering PhD candidate Zi Wang, his supervisor, Dr KC Wong, and Dr Andrew Lucas from Agent Oriented Software Pty Ltd to design an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that mimics the behaviour of a bird of prey.
Dr Andrea
Griffin has been studying how animals learn to recognise new dangers for 15
years. Her past work has included developing conditioning techniques for
training endangered marsupials to recognise predators and studying how invasive
birds learn to recognise traps and humans trapping them.
But now, she has
put her expertise to a new use.
“We know from
my work and that of many others that birds are very attuned to learning about
new dangers, including new predators and dangerous places. Much of their
learning occurs socially. In other words, they witness the fear reactions of
other birds and learn to avoid associated stimuli. Fear reactions include alarm
vocalisations. But learners need to see the cause of the alarm at the same time.
For example, they have to see a human handling a bird and hear it alarm calling
at the same time, then they will learn to avoid the human.”
“The issue with
managing birds in vineyards is that they quickly habituate to scaring
techniques, such as-powered thunderclap guns. This is also a highly
generalizable stimulus because it is always identical, so once birds have
learnt that nothing happens in one vineyard, they will also show no response in
other vineyards. So, one potential solution is to add a new bird of prey to the
community in which they live. Birds don’t habituate the birds of prey.”
By carrying a
bird corpse and broadcasting distress calls, a signal that birds make when they
are captured by a predator, the drone is designed to look like a bird of prey
that has just caught another bird.
“Some species
also respond very strongly to corpses of other birds and interpret these as
danger. Although we don’t know that this occurs for all species, the drone is
designed to tap this ability. The idea is that a drone designed in this way
will become recognised as a successful new predator in the community, which
will reduce the likelihood of habituation.”
NSW Department
of Primary Industries viticulture development officer Darren Fahey, estimates
that birds cause $300 million-a-year crop and winegrape losses in Australia.
AOS is pursuing the autonomous drone approach,
and working with Sydney University to do the research on what would scare
birds, without harming them.
Early trials using the multi-rotor
hexacopter predator drone are promising and results have been published in the
journal Crop Protection (https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1YkrTxPFYiYDj).
Further trials are underway.
The topic has
been the object of a Newcastle Herald article: https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5962682/vineyard-drone-on-hungry-birds-tail/
