Development of Drone Systems for Prevention of Bird Damage

Abstract

The cost of damage to agricultural crops caused by birds has been increasing year after year. Covering the entire space above an agricultural field, such as an orchard, with nets or wires would require enormous expense for installation and maintenance. Although threatening countermeasures can be manually undertaken using devices such as pyrotechnics, such activities do not have persistent effects and the damages can be repeated when not monitored. In particular, preventing damages by constantly monitoring for pest birds, such as crows, is difficult. In this study, we install fixed monitoring cameras for incoming prevention of birds. Then, the drone takes off and hovers around the area of detection to expel birds. We developed a test drone and conducted tests at a vineyard to evaluate the system. By making the drone autonomously fly around, we got the result that from 3 to 11 flying birds, especially Corvus corone, flew from 0 to 3 birds.