"Another Bear?" Japan Deploys AI Drones Blasting Noise from the Sky as a Last Resort

Drone System Developer in Tochigi Prefecture Takes Action
Rising Human Casualties from Bear Activity Since April

Japan, which has been struggling with a surge in bear appearances and even human casualties, has begun deploying unmanned bear-repellent drones.

Bear Appearance Response Photo. Shiretoko Foundation Japan Website.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun on June 14, a drone system development company in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, recently developed drone software equipped with bear detection capabilities.

The company created this software by training it with tens of thousands of bear images, enabling the software to identify bears. Drones equipped with this product can not only detect bears and send email notifications to relevant authorities but also repel bears by shining strong lights and generating noise at a level of 129 decibels—comparable to the sound of a jet engine during flight.

A company representative stated that currently, only visible light is used for bear detection, but there are plans to evolve the system to utilize infrared detection in the future.

Recently in Japan, as bear populations have increased and attacks on humans have become more frequent, advanced technologies such as wolf-shaped robots—natural predators of bears—or AI-equipped detectors are being used for bear repellent purposes.

Since April, as bears have awakened from hibernation and become active, at least four people are believed to have died after being attacked by bears while foraging for wild edible plants in the Tohoku region, including Iwate and Yamagata Prefectures.

Recently, a bear was also spotted for several days in a residential area in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, before being captured after three days of tracking. Utsunomiya is the largest city in Tochigi Prefecture with a population of about 510,000 people. The bear was reported to have been captured in a residential area approximately 2 kilometers south of JR Utsunomiya Station. It was described as an adult bear about 1 meter in length.

As bear sightings continued, the Utsunomiya City Board of Education temporarily closed all 94 municipal elementary and junior high schools, with some schools extending closures until the 9th.

Japanese forest journalist Atsuo Tanaka recently pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as the background for the increasing phenomenon of bears appearing in the middle of cities. He explained that several years of human absence during the pandemic may have altered the behavioral patterns of wild animals, and "Once wild animals enter a city, they often remember the experience and return again."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.