Not long ago, I read about a new shooting sport in Colorado, instead of shooting skeet pigeons, the sportsmen were shooting UAVs with shotguns, rifles and special guns usually used for shooting birds. Well, shooting flying birds is very difficult, and when these sportsmen indeed do hit one, well it kind of ruins the whole day for said bird, so using a Micro Air Vehicle or MAV, the model airplane size UAV or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle makes sense. Okay so, let’s talk shall we?
Shooting birds down with bullets, buckshot, or a shotgun type ammo isn’t easy, but I imagine it is even more difficult to shoot one down with a bow and arrow. I’d like to see you do that, no matter how good you are. That’s a lot of math, even for a radar sensor’ed weapon, so just think how difficult it would be to do with a bow and arrow, something that moves much slower than a bullet and the bird can see it coming and attempt to dodge it slightly. Maybe what we need is a new sport which uses archery arrows to shoot down model airplane sized drones.
Aerovironment might even find a new application for their bird flapping UAV that is about the size of a homing pigeon. If the small MAV robotic model airplane sized bird had optical flow sensors for terrain avoidance which is produced by CentEye, Inc. in Washington DC, it could fly around in circles while the sportsmen and sportswomen waited for it to fly through the zone to open fire on it, thus, ensuring stray arrows fell within the safety boundaries of the range. The Tiny OS (operating system) is very simple, not so costly, and would work perfect for what I am describing here.
“Save the Birds” groups might really love this idea, along with groups like PETA who hate to see hunting for mere sport, as they consider it cruelty to animals. Personally, I can think of nothing better to help hone the skills of archery sports people. Further, it would give us far more respect for our National Heritage and the American Indians who hunted moving targets with bows and arrows for food.
It’s very hard to hit a moving object, even more so when there are no references, which is the case when something is flying through the air like that. Well, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.