Edmonton airport establishes routine drone usage with bird scarer

The airport serving the capital of Canada's Alberta province is to use a robotic autonomous bird robot, mimicking a small bird of prey, to scare away other birds from aircraft around the airport. Called Robird, the drone is the latest in a suite of UAV systems that the airport plans to use to observe wildlife, inspect buildings and take 3D measurements. The new device will be brought into service at the end of May.

Robird was developed by Clear Flight Solutions, a spin-off of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Designed to resemble and fly like a falcon, it exploits the natural instinct of birds to avoid a predator, meaning that they will never get used to it. Clear Flight Solutions received a €1.6m grant from an American-based seed and early-stage funding specialist, the Cottonwood Euro Technology Fund – Cottonwood’s first European investment – to develop the technology, and has collaborated with Aerium Analytics, a Canadian firm specialising in services for unmanned aerial systems, to integrate the robot system into the airport’s operations.