Scream! (Robot) Birds Are All Over The House!

We have no idea what the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, George Foreman, or the American Ornithopter Society are up to these days, but a couple of guys from Latvia have designed, built and flown a robot that looks like a bird and flies like one.

Not a bird, not a plane. Just run for your life.

Tirebiter

This is worth being terribly frightened about,” said Arthur Tirebiter, Offensive Chief of Analysis at the Hartz Mountain Bird Food Laboratory. “These things are scary as hell because they don’t eat bird food. Our share value is going to get whacked.”

Apparently, the birds eat Duracell batteries, which they prefer over Eveready batteries.

The bird is bigger than an eagle, closer in size to a juvenile pterodactyl.

Junior

Recently, Vasily Vasolinovich and Boris Terodactilinski, the inventors, demonstrated “Baldy”, one of the robotic birds, to a throng of geeky kids at the recent Latvian Dumpling Convention. 

Baldy

 

Baldy took off and was immediately attacked by a gang of angry swallows.

Instructional Video Here: http://on.fb.me/1U1XTbE

We asked Vasolinovich what kind of technology is involved.

Vasolinovich

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” laughed Vasolinovich, “Only kidding!!  But seriously, it’s a bunch of things that crank really hard.”

Terodactilinski

Terodactilinski offered more perspective.

“We’ve made significant mechanical breakthroughs, but I think it’s the artificial intelligence (AI) that we built into Baldy and all the rest of them.  That means they are capable of independent thinking, and we’ve programmed it to think like a bird.  Bird brain!!!  Do you get the joke?” laughed Terodactilinski until his sides split.

"The idea of building in bird behavior through AI is quite a bold move,” said Vigo Budgy, Professor of Bird Brain Studies at the Woodpecker Technical University in the Canary Islands.  “This means they may try to mate with small private aircraft, nest in abandoned car lots, and my guess is that when enough of these are launched, they’ll exhibit flocking behavior.”

Budgy

Albatross

“The flocking instinct in these birds has me worried, “said Brenda Albatross, Assistant Professor of Avian Bowling at Flycatcher Community College, Pink Flamingo, Florida.  "Because they’re programmed to do it and you can't control them. I’m terrified actually.”  

Hideki Rodan, aeronautical inventor and 10^th grader at Mitsubishi Egret High School, in Mothra, Japan. “If I were those guys, I’d take the second version right into production and produce thousands, maybe tens of thousands.”

Rodan

Why the second version?

“I can’t reveal my sources, but it is safe to say that V2 will have laser targeting for pinpoint accuracy,” said Rodan.

 

Buzzard "Buzz" Aldrin, second man to walk on the Moon and the first stoned astronaut in line to go to Mars said, "It will make things a lot more homey if they send a bunch of these things to Mars before I get there and I can watch these things wheeling about the carbon dioxide as the sun goes down."

Buzz

Meanwhile, back in Peoria