It is hoped that Robo Kiwi will teach dogs not to attack real kiwi. Photo: Supplied / National Kiwi Hatchery Aotearoa
A researcher involved in a project to protect kiwi from uncontrolled dogs says their new deterrent is an improvement on older models.
A group of Canterbury students have joined forces with National Kiwi Hatchery in Rotorua to develop a new tool that discourages dogs from attacking and killing the national bird.
Robo Kiwi, which is currently still being tested, is designed to deter uncontrolled dogs, which cause 70 percent of kiwi deaths in the wild.
"We need our dogs to be trained, especially in areas where there are kiwis" - Rob Whitton
Rob Whitton who works in technology at government research institute Scion, which is involved in the project said Robo Kiwi's realistic movement helped train dogs to avoid the birds.
Photo: Supplied / National Kiwi Hatchery Aotearoa
Dog owners could currently take their pets to kiwi avoidance training, he said.
"The purpose of it is for it to have some exposure to something it thinks is a kiwi and then it has a correction and it starts to associate that with the kiwi, so it'll stay away."
But currently a taxidermied kiwi which was static was used to train dogs to avoid the birds, he said.
"We were looking at ways we could improve that because when a dog ... is doing the kiwi avoidance training it needs to interact with the prop."
Some dogs did not interact with the static kiwi at all which meant they could not be trained, he said.
Not only that but taxidermied kiwi were difficult to get hold of and had to be shared around, he said.
"So we wanted to introduce something a little big more realistic, something a bit more modern, something with some movement to attract the attention of the dogs."
The Robo Kiwi moved and was much closer to a real kiwi than what was currently available, he said.
"It can be set off by the trainer when the dog comes past, so when the dog comes to interact with it, it can be given a correction, so we're hoping we can prove that this is a big improvement on the current training prop."
The dog would wear a collar which would give it "an uncomfortable feeling" when it got a correction from interacting with Robo Kiwi, he said.
If that was the case the group would then make several more of the models to send out to volunteers and Save the Kiwi around the country, he said.
Robo Kiwi could prove to be a valuable tool and provide some consistency in terms of what dog trainers were using, he said.
"The main purpose is just to get a greater response from the dog, because if a dog doesn't interact with the prop then it can't be trained and there's nothing else you can do after that.
"So we want to keep working on it and improving its reliability and its realism and try to get as many dogs as possible interacting with it."
Whitton said he would like to use Robo Kiwi to train dogs across the country.