Robotic Decoys
Founded in the mid 1990’s, Custom Robotic Wildlife has been creating robotic animal decoys to be employed in law enforcement settings. Aiming to reduce illegal hunting and poaching, the decoys are primarily used in North America but have been deployed around the world. Combining robotics and taxidermy, the decoys can be deployed by law enforcement officers in areas of suspected poaching activity, luring in poachers as rangers await their arrival remotely. Some of their most popular, hyper-realistic decoys include different varieties of deer and turkey, each performing different actions or propped up in different positions. Sitting atop a weighted mount, the decoys are made of the skinned animal which they represent, and are programmed to perform actions emulating their real life counterpart (such as excreting waste, head and tail movements, reflective eyeballs, etc). All decoys can be tailored to operate on the basis of a hand-held radio-controlled unit or be pre-programmed. While the ethics behind skinning an animal in order to fight against the human greed that culminates in poaching and pleasure hunting are debatable, the decoys are able to be as successful as they are because of how real they look to both the trained and untrained eye.
Categories
Artificial Life, Biodiversity, Illegal Resource Extraction, Regulation
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