1,019 research outputs found
LAVAPilot: Lightweight UAV Trajectory Planner with Situational Awareness for Embedded Autonomy to Track and Locate Radio-tags
Tracking and locating radio-tagged wildlife is a labor-intensive and
time-consuming task necessary in wildlife conservation. In this article, we
focus on the problem of achieving embedded autonomy for a resource-limited
aerial robot for the task capable of avoiding undesirable disturbances to
wildlife. We employ a lightweight sensor system capable of simultaneous (noisy)
measurements of radio signal strength information from multiple tags for
estimating object locations. We formulate a new lightweight task-based
trajectory planning method-LAVAPilot-with a greedy evaluation strategy and a
void functional formulation to achieve situational awareness to maintain a safe
distance from objects of interest. Conceptually, we embed our intuition of
moving closer to reduce the uncertainty of measurements into LAVAPilot instead
of employing a computationally intensive information gain based planning
strategy. We employ LAVAPilot and the sensor to build a lightweight aerial
robot platform with fully embedded autonomy for jointly tracking and planning
to track and locate multiple VHF radio collar tags used by conservation
biologists. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulation-based experiments,
implementations on a single board compute module, and field experiments using
an aerial robot platform with multiple VHF radio collar tags, we evaluate our
joint planning and tracking algorithms. Further, we compare our method with
other information-based planning methods with and without situational awareness
to demonstrate the effectiveness of our robot executing LAVAPilot. Our
experiments demonstrate that LAVAPilot significantly reduces (by 98.5%) the
computational cost of planning to enable real-time planning decisions whilst
achieving similar localization accuracy of objects compared to information gain
based planning methods, albeit taking a slightly longer time to complete a
mission.Comment: Accepted to 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems (IROS
ConservationBots: Autonomous Aerial Robot for Fast Robust Wildlife Tracking in Complex Terrains
Today, the most widespread, widely applicable technology for gathering data
relies on experienced scientists armed with handheld radio telemetry equipment
to locate low-power radio transmitters attached to wildlife from the ground.
Although aerial robots can transform labor-intensive conservation tasks, the
realization of autonomous systems for tackling task complexities under
real-world conditions remains a challenge. We developed ConservationBots-small
aerial robots for tracking multiple, dynamic, radio-tagged wildlife. The aerial
robot achieves robust localization performance and fast task completion times
-- significant for energy-limited aerial systems while avoiding close
encounters with potential, counter-productive disturbances to wildlife. Our
approach overcomes the technical and practical problems posed by combining a
lightweight sensor with new concepts: i) planning to determine both trajectory
and measurement actions guided by an information-theoretic objective, which
allows the robot to strategically select near-instantaneous range-only
measurements to achieve faster localization, and time-consuming sensor rotation
actions to acquire bearing measurements and achieve robust tracking
performance; ii) a bearing detector more robust to noise and iii) a tracking
algorithm formulation robust to missed and false detections experienced in
real-world conditions. We conducted extensive studies: simulations built upon
complex signal propagation over high-resolution elevation data on diverse
geographical terrains; field testing; studies with wombats (Lasiorhinus
latifrons; nocturnal, vulnerable species dwelling in underground warrens) and
tracking comparisons with a highly experienced biologist to validate the
effectiveness of our aerial robot and demonstrate the significant advantages
over the manual method.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figure
Fish tracking technology development. Phases 1 and 2, project definition desk study and equipment
The document reports on the major findings from a definition study to appraise the options to develop fish tracking equipment, in particular tags and data logging systems, in order to improve the effeciency of the Agency tracking studies and to obtain a greater understanding of fish biology. The definition study was in two parts. The first, Phase 1, collated and evaluated all the known tracking systems that may be suitable for studies of fish which are either produced commercially or have been constructed for specific in-house studies. Phase 2 was an evaluation of all the tracking equipment considered to merit further investigation in Phase 1. The deficiencies between existing and required technologies to improve the efficiency of Agency's tracking studies and to obtain a greater understanding of fish biology are also identified
UAV Aided Data Collection for Wildlife Monitoring using Cache-enabled Mobile Ad-hoc Wireless Sensor Nodes
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted data collection is not a new concept and has been used in various mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a caching assisted scheme alternative to routing in MANETs for the purpose of wildlife monitoring. Rather than deploying a routing protocol, data is collected and transported to and from a base station using a UAV. Although some literature exists on such an approach, we propose the use of intermediate caching between the mobile nodes and compare it to a baseline scenario where no caching is used. The paper puts forward our communication design where we have simulated the movement of multiple mobile sensor nodes in a field that move according to the Levy walk model imitating wildlife animal foraging and a UAV that makes regular trips across the field to collect data from them. The unmanned aerial vehicle can collect data not only from the current node it is communicating with but also data of other nodes that this node came into contact with. Simulations show that exchanging cached data is highly advantages as the drone can indirectly communicate with many more mobile nodes
Fish tracking technology development. Phase 1 project definition desk study
The document reports on Phase 1 of a definition study to appraise the options to develop fish tracking equipment, in particular tags and data logging systems in order to improve the efficiency of the Environment Agency's tracking studies and to obtain a greater understanding of fish
biology.
Covered in this report are radio telemetry, audio telemetry, High Resolution Position Fixing, data storage and archival tags and other fish tracking systems such as biosonics
A low cost way for assessing bird risk hazards in power lines: Fixed-wing small Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Accidents on power lines are one of the most important causes of man-induced mortality for raptors and soaring birds. The factors that condition the hazard have been extensively studied, and currently there are a variety of technical solutions available to miti- gate the risk. Most of the resources in conservation projects to reduce avian mortality now are invested in fieldwork to monitor the lines, which diverts the resources available to install actual corrective measures to mitigate bird hazard. Little progress has been achieved in the methodology to characterize line risk, which is an expensive, tedious, and time- consuming task. In this work we describe the use of low cost small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) equipped with on-board cameras for power line surveillance. As a case study, we characterized four power lines, geo-referenced every pylon in selected portions, and assessed their hazard for birds. We compare the effectiveness of two variants of the sUAS method for data acquisition and two methods of plane control. This work provides evidence of the usefulness of sUAS as a fast, inexpensive, and practical tool in conservation biology, adding to their already known applications in wildlife monitoring, the environmental impact assessment of infrastructures
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