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Trading Bird Food for Cigarette Butts

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:47PM   
from the articles-for-the-birds dept.

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Hackaday is a story on positive reinforcement to train crows to pick up litter:

A Dutch startup wants to teach the crow population to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for bird treats.

The whole Corvidae family of birds is highly intelligent so it shouldn’t be a problem training them that they will get a reward for depositing something the Hominidae family regularly throw on the street where the birds live. This idea is in turn an evolution of the open-source Crow Box.

For some, leveraging the intelligence of animals is more appealing than programming drones which could do the same thing. A vision system mixed with a drone and a manipulator could fulfull[sic] the same function but animals are self-repairing and autonomous without our code. The irony of this project is that, although it's probably fairly easy to train crows to recognize cigarette butts, the implementation hinges on having a vision system that can recognize the butts in order to properly train the crows in the first place.

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Original Submission

• Re:Sad but true (Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @11:54PM

  by c0lo (156) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @11:54PM (#580164) Journal

  However, I don't care about my health being affected - I'll walk away. That's not the issue. An issue is that you're an addict who stopped getting benefit (buzz/whatever) from the nicotine years ago and now you're just stuck in a loop having to have it in order to get back to "normal". That bugs me in a person. Just how weak are you? You're supposed to be adults and you can't see it or combat it.

  So you admit that you aren't just lung-nazi, but righteous-nazi as well?

  I (and anyone) can be as strong or as weak as they want/afford/etc.
  As long as as it doesn't affect you, I'd appreciate if you could keep your value judgments for yourself and don't try to impose them on me - they are as hurtful for my mind as smoke from others would be to your comfort.

  Kill yourself with drugs, smoking, alcohol, whatever. Just don't inflict it on me, or other people, and have some common decency while you're there.

  I'm already doing it - not inflicting anything of my habits to you.
  In return, I'd be grateful if you stop your 'pollution with righteousness' - I'm getting annoyed/triggered by this, very much like you do by the presence of inconsiderate smokers in public places.

  (Dam', I'm an adult and, for reasons I don't need to share with anyone, I chose to continue smoking. I find it rude to call me "weak" when you know next to nothing about me, and doing this annoys me).

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent

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