Alaska’s second largest airport is placing effort and assets into avoiding airplane-wildlife collisions — particularly by bringing a $70,000 robotic canine named “Aurora” onto the group to scare wildlife away from runways in Fairbanks, the Alaska Division of Transportation and Public Amenities introduced in mid-March.
Aurora is known as for the design on the robotic’s physique, which is supposed to appear like the northern lights, or aurora borealis.
“Aurora is the primary of its sort wildlife hazard discount robotic,” AKDOT program supervisor Ryan Marlowe told the Alaska State Legislature Committee on Transportation on March 19. “It will likely be utilized in Fairbanks for the only objective of clearing wildlife. It will give us the flexibility to check routine, every-hour-on-the-hour … clearing out the infield.”
USDA biologists would deploy the robotic, constructed by Boston Dynamics, to comb pure areas close to the 4 runways at Fairbanks Worldwide Airport. Aurora would additionally carry an automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast system, also called ADS-B, to speak its location with pilots and air visitors controllers, Marlowe mentioned. He additionally talked about that Aurora’s efficacy at Fairbanks Worldwide Airport may lend to utilizing the identical robotic at different airports, as nicely.
“We will make it appear like a coyote, or a fox,” Marlowe says. “The only objective of that is to behave as a predator and permit for us to invoke that response in wildlife with out having to make use of different mitigation. It will likely be a primary of its sort for the FAA and with the group.”
Aurora’s building and implementation was funded with a Federal Analysis Grant, in accordance with an AKDOT Instagram post. Commenters on the publish have been largely important of the robotic and the motion as an entire, calling it a waste of state assets. One commenter even argued that utilizing a robotic to discourage wildlife was a job one particular person may do with residing canines. (Presently, Alaska employs people and loud noises, like paintball weapons, to discourage wildlife from close by runways.)
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In his presentation, Marlowe recalled the story of Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, who made an emergency touchdown with an Airbus A320 filled with passengers on the Hudson River in 2009 after a flock of geese compromised each engines throughout take-off from LaGuardia Airport. Hen and different wildlife deterrence is necessary for safer airport operations. However in Alaska, different proposed plans like flying drones to spray wildlife with grape juice and releasing pigs into airport infields to eat chook eggs didn’t fairly meet the mark, the Associated Press reported.
In 2023, the FAA Wildlife Strike Database recorded 93 wildlife collisions with airplanes in Alaska. Of these, solely two of them have been non-bird wildlife, each muskrats. Some 19,623 collisions occurred nationwide that very same 12 months.
