A new robot search system has joined the hunt for the ivory-billed woodpecker, feared extinct for 60 years until a flurry of unconfirmed sightings in recent years.

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SAN FRANCISCO: Robots have joined the hunt for the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of America's most majestic birds that for decades was feared extinct.

Scientists from California and Texas have developed a robot that can scan the skies and pick out birds from other objects, using complex algorithms that send cameras whirring into action whenever a bird is spotted.

The cameras have been installed in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, where conservationists hope they will capture evidence of the elusive woodpecker, often described as 'The Holy Grail' of birdwatchers.

The rare bird was believed to be extinct after it vanished six decades ago. But a flurry of unconfirmed sightings in recent years - including a grainy video shot in 2004 - has fueled speculation that it may have survived.

Now Mark Goldberg, from the University of California, Berkeley, and Song Dezhen, from Texas A&M University, hope their high-tech robot camera will settle the debate once and for all.

Goldberg, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, said the project involved much more than simply pointing video cameras at the sky. "If you did that, the computer's hard drive would be filled in no time," he said. "The challenge is developing software that is able to distinguish between birds and other moving objects."

With a high-resolution camera that is powerful enough to zoom in and read information on a credit card around six metres away, the scientists are confident that if the woodpecker flies past, it will be captured on film.

The computer software is also able to look past the unpredictable conditions of the natural environment, filtering out false readings from clouds, water reflections and natural leaves. "The program knows, for instance, that the ivory-billed woodpecker flies 32 to 64 kilometres per hour, so anything outside that range is deleted," said Song.

Data from the computer is collected every two weeks and sent to researchers at the ornithology lab at New York's Cornell University as well as Texas A&M and Berkeley for analysis. "If something really interesting is in the frame, Cornell makes the call," Song said.

Song and Goldberg became interested in developing the bird-spotting technology after reading a newspaper article about the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker. "If the system can catch any kind of bird, that's a success for us," said Song. "But if it catches an ivory bill, it's a bonus."