Overview

• ERDC’s Coyote Rover prototypes are unmanned ground vehicles disguised as realistic coyote decoys to scare off birds and other wildlife on military runways.
• Field demonstrations at Naval Air Station Pensacola and bases in Florida and Tennessee have shown the rovers reduce wildlife strike risks at a lower cost than damage estimates.
• According to the US Air Force safety authority, bird strikes inflicted about $12 million in damage last year, driving the search for novel deterrent systems.
• Engineers Shea Hammond and Jacob Jung spent five years developing the rovers and have equipped them with programmable patrol routes and charging stations for sustained operation.
• Wider deployment depends on securing additional funding to finalize testing and equip the vehicles with AI-driven, species-specific deterrence features.