Crash test: How hedgehog dummies help to make robotic lawnmowers safer

Hundreds, if not thousands, of hedgehogs are run over by robotic lawn mowers every year in Germany alone. Customers would certainly like to buy robotic lawn mowers that recognize hedgehogs and avoid them; manufacturers would like to teach their mowers to do this – and we at the computer magazine c't would like to test it. But you need hedgehog dummies to do this, just as you need crash test dummies to simulate car accidents – but there have been no hedgehog crash test dummies until now.

The team from c't, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin and the specialist crash test company CTS from Münster are developing such hedgehog dummies. This video shows how promising the first test run with the current hedgehog prototypes has been.

Standardizing test procedures

The aim of the project is to standardize hedgehog dummies and test procedures. The manufacturers of robotic lawnmowers could buy the dummies and prove the hedgehog protection of their devices using this comparable procedure. And magazines like us would have the opportunity to check this using the same procedure with the same hedgehog dummies.

The IZW documents cases throughout Germany in which hedgehogs are injured by garden tools – several hundred a year, but the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. Even small cuts above the eyes are life-threatening for hedgehogs because they cannot lick themselves clean and can die from parasite infestation. A severed front leg is also a death sentence, even if the wound heals because the hedgehogs can then no longer dig for prey and starve to death.

(jow)