Back Street Birds robotics team tackle bird-airplane collisions

The Woodstock-based FIRST FLL robotics team, Back Street Birds, created a technical research project as part of this season's "Allied Animals" theme. The project addresses the issue of birds colliding with commercial airplanes.

Having spoken to aviation industry experts, insurance companies, ornithology specialists, this middle school team has figured out that painting red stripes or sections on key areas of the airplane will increase visibility for birds and, in turn, reduce the number of birds colliding with airplanes.

The color red is a specific color for birds that they can see stronger than any other color. In the bird's ultraviolet field of vision, red appears as dark blue to dark purple, depending on the intensity of red. It is estimated that $1.2 billion has been spent on bird-strike related issues in the last 10 years.

Compared to 1990, incidents have increased 739 percent. The team believes that painting red chevron stripes or solid red on the nose and turbines, birds and human lives would be saved. Money spent on paint would be recovered by the savings from the reduced insurance claims.

Back Street Birds is a team of 10 middle school students from Woodstock Community Unit School District 200 in Illinois.

In January at the FLL State Championship, their team won the Research Innovation Award. After the championship, they continued to pursue the implementation of their project by presenting the idea to United Airlines. In the Spring 2017, Vol XXIX, No. 1, Pages 7-8 "Our Future: The Killing Sky" of the World Ecology Report, they published their research to share with the general public. They further communicated their idea on April 13, 2017 in New York City at the United Nations International Conference on Health and Environment, chaired by Dr. Christine Durbak, conference chair and founder of World Information Transfer Inc. To read the report, visit www.woodstockschools.org.

FIRST is a program for kindergarten to 12th grade with four different programs, jrFLL, FLL, FTC, and FRC. In the FLL program, fourth- to eighth-grade students form a team of less than 10 students. There are three aspects of the competition, robot performance, research, and teamwork. Every year the season has a new theme. This year, the "Animal Allies" theme focused on how humans help animals and how animals help humans. The most innovative research ideas are encouraged to apply for the FIRST Global Innovation Award with a top prize of $20,000 to help the team further their invention idea or to support activities related to FIRST programs. Coached by teacher Gigi Carlson, the team has submitted their idea for Global Innovation Award consideration, to be determined June 18-20, 2017 in Washington, D.C.