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Commercial-Mining Drones Keep Getting Attacked By Eagles (abc.net.au)
An anonymous reader summarizes an article from ABC News:
The world's seventh-biggest gold producer has lost more than nine drones because of eagle attacks. "People couldn't believe I was able to get such a good photo of an eagle airborne," complained surveyor Rick Steven at a conference sponsored by the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. "But I didn't... Another eagle took that photo... I was getting attacked by two eagles simultaneously." The specially-constructed drones carry a $10,000 camera for high-resolution photos and equipment that produces high-detail contour maps of potential mining areas, and so far the company estimates they've lost more than $100,000 worth of technology to eagle attacks. They've tried camouflage -- including disguising the drones as another eagle -- but unfortunately, according to Stevens, the eagle is the "natural enemy" of the drone.
One drone's video is interrupted by the sudden appearance of an eagle, followed almost immediately by footage from the ground by a sideways drone camera. That video -- included in the article -- ends with a reminder that "Eagle attacks on drones have been documented across the world, to the point where some European police forces are now training them to take down unauthorized aircraft."
One drone's video is interrupted by the sudden appearance of an eagle, followed almost immediately by footage from the ground by a sideways drone camera. That video -- included in the article -- ends with a reminder that "Eagle attacks on drones have been documented across the world, to the point where some European police forces are now training them to take down unauthorized aircraft."
Can they put protruding electrodes on them to zap eagles?
Table-ized A.I.
I'm only worried about them and don't give a shit about the drones. Can they get hurt by the attacks?
Freedom hates drones.
I wonder how much eagle habitat the mining company has destroyed.
Big eyes on the top like you put on a hat. Have to do the same thing with Mississippi Kites. If they can track motion, even better.
Were they golden eagles?
Have they tried disguising their drones as cats?
Even the birds are pro USA! and they are good at killing the junk from china
Capture an eagle and put it in an MRI or something and expose it to drone stimuli to see what's upsetting the eagle.
Your mining drones just have to be protected. If you want to use scout drones, Hobgoblins are generally regarded as the best.
No worries about getting in trouble using a gun against damn drones over your property, just take up falconry or have a sympathetic neighbor who does
Or, is someone just bad at using-hyphens?
We just awoke our planet's soul and it's fighting back... Jokes aside, this article makes me think about how we are used to having our technological creations interfere with our complex world without much opposition from nature. If there exists something like karma, it should look like this.
I'm on the side of the eagles on this one.
Why is Snark Required?
They should learn to hire programmers who are friendly with the Eagles.
I can assure you that only employing people you are sure of having absolute control over will not make the Eagles see drones as friendly.
Dumb ass people.
After flying RC planes/helicopters/quads for decades you learn that flying above a bird of prey is considered an aggressive dominating move and they will almost always counter to defend their territory and reestablish dominance. If you fly below them like the other smaller birds they consider you prey and rarely attack because you are not their familiar favorite meal.
Why the hyphen?
More than nine? Maybe 10??
I know plenty of people who would love to take care of that eagle problem. For much less than $100K..
Me it's RC boats. I live in a city so it's the cheapest, quickest way to get my RC nerdery done. Apparently, for a dog's visual cortex, this:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OdtfMNj...
looks like the most delicious roast chicken a dog could ever want. As soon as I put the boat in the water, every dog around will jump into the water and desperately swim after the stupid thing. Now I warn dog owners before I put the boat in the water!
One day a guy shows up with a Husky. He tells me not to worry, Huskies don't like the water. OK, fine. After he told me he never thought he'd see his dog chest-deep in the water! It was true however that this dog didn't go any further and didn't actually swim for it. But he also didn't expect to have to towel down his dog!
Mostly random stuff.
mother nature has won.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Wow! Such story! Much relavent!
... I've hated this retarded construction: "More than" + some weird number -- high, specific, not round.
"The world's seventh-biggest gold producer has lost more than nine drones because of eagle attacks."
So... ten drones, then?
I just heard "over 46" somethings earlier tonight. That would be 47, I suppose?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You are.
A nesting pair of Cooper's Hawks in the back yard killed a crow, and they were batting around a dismembered crow's head to entertain their fledgling.
The crows will mess with a raptor, especially since they are more numerous. Like with the horse's head in the bed scene, I think the hawks were sending a message that this is not a good idea.
We know how to count to ten here...
It was a mistake doing this operation. Top Gun was such a success, we figured a spin off called Iron Eagle would work. But even after giving it a second go, the project had to be scrapped.
Destroy the drone scum. The eagle shall be victorious.
Have gnu, will travel.
Eh, I found it moderately interesting.
Seems this all started after a disagreement between the mines and their lawyer harvey birdman.
How retarded are people in our times?
Like every animal of prey Eagles are very territorial. Of course they attack any other eagle, or bird of prey in their territory. Camouflaging a drone as an Eagle is like painting a big cross hair on it.
On top of that: the drones are pretty big. It is no surprise that a eagle is concerned about it and attacks drones, too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Meh, it just shows we have no idea how an animal will interpret things.
Mostly random stuff.
[points at mining company] ha ha!
(Seriously this is the coolest thing I've read in a long time. Go eagles!)
Unless the Australian $ was heavily devalued recently there're overpaying for a 1m flying wing. Should be at most $1000 fully equipped with enough bells and whistles to scare off eagles.
The camera would have to be a specialist hyperspectral unit to cost that much as well.
Meh, it just shows we have no idea how an animal will interpret things.
Meh, your response (and the AC response) show how out of touch you are with memes. You aren't even familiar with the ones which are over already. Not that this means you're a bad person. It probably means you have a life
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I want to try using that mirror paint on the inside of a lexan body shell. I'm planning to vacuuform bodies for my quads because I can't find good protective shells for them otherwise. I wonder what a bird would think of that... maybe stop to admire itself in the reflection ;)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"....In this case the intruders are 'commercial mining' interests. If the miners find anything they will inevitably destroy the local ecology...."
I say one for the 'Little guy' but the little guy is one of the world's largest eagles with a wing span of 1.8 to 2 metres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A mining company like this will take all the gold out using open cut mining and leave a huge scar in the ground.
'Rape and Pillage' of the enviroment on a grand scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Surely a mining machine can crush things with it's mining gear? Makes you wonder how a bird can knock over such heavy machinery? Oh, wait, it's only a surveying drone!
Go Eagles, the last protector of freedom.
Why not hire someone who studies eagles to figure out why they're doing this? Eagles are Apex predators and like many apex predators are typically solitary and territorial. It probably thinks the drone is a food or mate competitor and it's protecting it's territory. Learn it's behavior and see if the drone is doing something to incite a protective or territorial or hunting response, then fix the drones so they don't incite the eagle to attack. Done.
Gold miners. You're borrowing the environment, learn to live with it, don't just do stupid shit. Disguising the drone to look like an eagle? That probably made it want to attack even more. Morons.
LOL. Dogs are bred from wolves, which chase their prey down - sometimes for miles - until it tires or stumbles and they're able to make the kill. So they're genetically predisposed to chase after things that move - squirrels, cars, tennis balls, thrown sticks. A boat in the water is a moving (chase-able) object with no distracting background, so triggers this chase instinct.
Cats likewise are stealth pouncers, so turning your back on them (so you can no longer see the cat) triggers an instinctive attack response.
I don't know why this is a problem. Just kill all of the eagles. Not like they will have a place to live once the mining company is done.
...because it sounds so much more like news than "ten".
What's with the bad mods? I did NOT mean to kill or injure the eagles, just scare them enough to end the attack. It's comparable to an electric fence for cattle: it doesn't kill the cattle, just frightens them.
Table-ized A.I.
We just need Gandalf to whisper a few words to a moth and the eagles will go away.
Can be rather off putting. They tend to hit the leading edge of the wing, trying to break it, but come off second best. Sometimes they go for the canopy.
Eagles are generally good for fining thermals, and so we often join them in flight, which is a wonderful thing. But if they look aggressive, time to move on.
I was once attacked by a Magpie (size of a crow). The little bird flapped his way up a thousand feet to my height above a ridge and then dived at my canopy. I then dived after him, but was no contest of course, he just flipped up behind me and had another go. Eventually I got high enough that he thought I was not a threat and just dropped out of the sky.
"Moria... You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."
Sounds like Gandalf is finally learning that he should just call the Eagles first and let them sort it out... :)
probably more like a roast duck than roast chicken.