Nov 13, 2006

Birds face new enemy: sonic scope

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Institute were concerned about airplane safety. It turns out that in a fight between a jumbo jet and a Canada Goose, the birds can hold their own.

In fact there have been close to 90,000 bird - plane collissions since 1990 in the United States alone. This is documented in almost too-much-fun detail by the Federal Aviation Authority. Their database data can be translated into an animationo showing dots appearing on a map of the U.S. in a time lapse - each dot represents a bird-plane collission for your choice of species.

These bird-plane collissions are blamed for the death of almost 200 passengers by the institute. But I think it's the billions of dollars of damage that really motivates their invention.

Here's how it works: they take 192 microphones and arrange them in a circle about a meter in diameter. Point this "audio telescope" in the general direction of birds and pick up a call. Then the software calculates the time the sound was received at each different microphone.

The kicker is the reason the institute wants to recognize what birds are in the plane's way. See, there are some birds too small to cause any damage a massive jet travelling at over a hundred miles an hour.

Yes, if air traffic controllers know what birds are in the way it could help avoid putting passengers in danger. But more often than not, it will be used to tell the difference between that "dangerous" Canada Goose blocking the way, and a sparrow that is about to become air kill.

If the bird is deemed no danger to the plane, then it lands. Whether the bird gets out of the way or not is of no concern to the airliners. They're probably more concerned about cutting back on time delays and fuel costs from having to circle one more time.

When this "sonic scope" does get put into use at airports, they might start to look a lot like that classic Nintendo video game Duck Hunt - birds will be dropping left, right and centre.