On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 9:36:48 AM UTC-6, Mike the Strike wrote:
On a few occasions, I have observed soaring birds fly quickly towards a point where they found a thermal - sometimes a distance of about a kilometer.. The speed and direction of them indicated to me that they were flying to an objective and not just hunting randomly. If so, this means that they can detect thermals remotely using their senses. If we can figure out how they are doing this, there is a chance we can build instruments to replicate their method.



Having studied the possibility of using electrostatic methods (thermals advect space charge from the ground and dust devils are actively charged by particle collision), this is very short range and not likely the mechanism birds are using. I would guess it has to be visual.



Mike

I suspect it is visual for birds. The have far better vision than we and can probably see small objects like seeds rising with the thermal. They may also possess special visual processing centers in their brains evolved to detect thermals.

I suspect the "one shot" DARPA program works the same way by detecting embedded objects like dust and seeds moving across the field of view then using powerful algorithms to process the data. Range the objects as they move across the field and the direction and speed of the wind can be determined.

What's interesting to me is the comment that the device will work out to the maximum effective range of currently fielded sniper rifles. .50 caliber rifle ER's can exceed 3000 meters. There is also a comment elsewhere indicating the DOD wants to issue this to every soldier so it can't be too expensive.