The Whooping Crane is an endangered species native to North America and there are approximately 575 in existence. There have been recent efforts to provide ecologists with a tool to study the multifaceted behavior of the endangered species. Like many species, cranes display distinctly identifiable movements while being threatened, acting territorial, migrating, or preening. The preliminary experiments described in this poster provide evidence that sensor data presented by a novel sensing platform, the CraneTracker, can be used to identify crane behaviors on-board. With the ability to identify these behaviors, ecologists will have a more granular insight on what occurs during a crane’s life on a daily basis

Anthony, David

Bennett, William P.

Fitzpatrick, Megan

Lacy, Anne

Vuran, Mehmet C

English

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University of Nebraska - Lincoln
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CSE Conference and Workshop Papers Computer Science and Engineering, Department of
2012
Poster Abstract: Crane Charades: Behavior
Identification via Backpack Mounted Sensor
Platforms
William P. Bennett
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, wbennett@cse.unl.edu
Megan Fitzpatrick
University of Wisconsin-Madison
David Anthony
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, danthony@cse.unl.edu
Mehmet C. Vuran
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, mcvuran@cse.unl.edu
Anne Lacy
International Crane Foundation
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Bennett, William P.; Fitzpatrick, Megan; Anthony, David; Vuran, Mehmet C.; and Lacy, Anne, "Poster Abstract: Crane Charades:
Behavior Identification via Backpack Mounted Sensor Platforms" (2012). CSE Conference and Workshop Papers. 289.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cseconfwork/289
Poster Abstract: Crane Charades: Behavior Identification
via Backpack Mounted Sensor Platforms
William P. Bennett, Jr.† Megan Fitzpatrick†† David Anthony† Mehmet C. Vuran† Anne Lacy‡
†CPN Laboratory, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE
{wbennett,danthony,mcvuran}@cse.unl.edu
††Zoology Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI
mjfitzpatric@wisc.edu
‡International Crane Foundation, Baraboo, WI
anne@savingcranes.org
ABSTRACT
The Whooping Crane is an endangered species native to
North America and there are approximately 575 in exis-
tence. There have been recent efforts to provide ecologists
with a tool to study the multifaceted behavior of the endan-
gered species. Like many species, cranes display distinctly
identifiable movements while being threatened, acting terri-
torial, migrating, or preening. The preliminary experiments
described in this poster provide evidence that sensor data
presented by a novel sensing platform, the CraneTracker,
can be used to identify crane behaviors on-board. With
the ability to identify these behaviors, ecologists will have a
more granular insight on what occurs during a crane’s life
on a daily basis.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
C.2.1 [Computer-Communication Networks]: Wireless
communication
General Terms
Experimentation
Keywords
Wireless sensor networks, tracking, behavior identification
1. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
The Whooping Crane (Grus americana) is one of the most
endangered species native to North America. Of the 575
in existence, 279 are from the original migratory Aransas-
Wood Buffalo population (AWBP). These birds conduct a
4, 000km annual migration from southern Texas to northern
Canada, often flying 950 km/day during migration. The
other portion of the cranes exist in captivity or re-introduced
in Wisconsin, Florida, and Louisiana.
Recently, conservation efforts have centered on utilizing
new tracking and monitoring technology to assist researchers
in answering concerns regarding the newly re-introduced
population in WI. The data collected from these efforts is
intended to reveal potential causes of mortality, inability to
reproduce in the wild, and possible impact a human domi-
nated landscape on these birds.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
IPSN’12, April 16–20, 2012, Beijing, China.
ACM 978-1-4503-1227-1/12/04.
Presently, Whooping Cranes’ inability to reproduce is the
most pressing threat to the success of the reintroduction
efforts. There are a several explanations for these problems.
First, it has been suggested that black-flies in the breeding
grounds in Canada may be harassing birds, forcing them to
flee from their nests. Second, the birds may be physically
unable to complete incubation due to the lack of energy
resources. They are compelled to leave their eggs to find
food resources away from their territory.
The cranes exhibit distinct movements related to the be-
haviors they are engaging in. These behaviors are typically
broken into comfort, locomotion, foraging, and social behav-
iors. These behaviors can be identified using state-of-the-art
sensors, while recording time and location. The frequency
of behaviors occurring or lack thereof, could be used to flag
irregular behavior. Using MEMS sensors, there has been
studies to identify animal behavior [3–6], which rely on data
loggers [6]. Consequently, the studies rely on the recovery
of devices to extract information. The improbable chance of
crane recapture, high device energy consumption and lack of
wireless data recovery make these tools unsuitable for mon-
itoring Whooping Cranes. Instead, ecologists rely on direct
observations, a task that is often difficult in field conditions.
In our recent work, we have developed the CraneTracker
platform [1], which provides a rich set of sensors coupled
with multi-modal communication to satisfy the data require-
ments of ecologists. Deployments with captive and wild
cranes have provided measurements that never existed be-
fore for crane monitoring. Moreover, the deployed platforms
have successfully survived 5 months of operation and a mi-
gration of 1, 725 km. In this work, we discuss the prelim-
inary data collected on captive birds that provide evidence
that the basic movements can be classified on-board using
the developed Crane Tracker platform [1].
2. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
To exploit the behavioral sensing capability of the Crane-
Tracker platform [1], a set of controlled experiments were
carried out at the International Crane Foundation, Bara-
boo, Wisconsin in July 2011. For the experiments, a tracker
was programmed to collect solid-state compass readings at
a sampling rate of 10 Hz for 30 seconds every 3 minutes.
The readings from this sensor consist of acceleration in three
axes, heading, pitch, roll and ambient temperature. To en-
sure their safety, crane were handled by experienced ecolo-
gists. The tracker was harnessed to a crane as a backpack
and monitored over a closed circuit camera Fig. 1(a). The
119
(a)
19:13 19:17 19:22 19:26 19:30 19:35 19:39 19:43 19:48 19:52
−20
−10
0
10
Time (HH:MM)
Ac
ce
le
ra
tio
n 
m
/s
2  
(x/
y/z
)
 
 
x
y
z
−300
−200
−100
0
100
D
eg
re
es
 (p
itc
h/r
oll
)
roll
pitch
Preen
Rest
(b)
22:49 22:53 22:58 23:02 23:06 23:11 23:15 23:19 23:24 23:28
−20
−10
0
10
Time (HH:MM)
Ac
ce
le
ra
tio
n 
m
/s
2  
(x/
y/z
)
 
 
x
y
z
−300
−200
−100
0
100
D
eg
re
es
 (p
itc
h/r
oll
)
roll
pitch
Preen Preen
Walk
(c)
Figure 1: (a) CraneTracker on captive Siberian Crane (top), close-up view (bottom). Behavioral movements
(b) rest to preen and (c) preen to walk to preen.
data were transmitted using the Zigbee radio interface to a
base station, which was equipped with a directional antenna.
The goal of the experiments was to correlate well-known
crane behaviors with the solid-state compass readings. The
behaviors from the camera feed were corroborated by an
ecologist.
Data from the compass were collected over 4 hours and
21, 882 records were received. In post processing, the video
recording was played in sync with and the plotted data
was annotated at points where basic behavior changed. In
Figs. 1(b) and 1(c), the tri-axial acceleration (m/s2) noted
on the left y-axis and orientation (pitch/roll in degrees)
noted on the right y-axis, are plotted over time. In the
burst depicted in Fig. 1(b), the crane begins in a resting
behavior then at 19 : 47 changes to a preening behavior. In
Fig. 1(c), the crane is preening, then at time 23 : 00 starts
to walk around the cage, and then at 23 : 22 returns back to
preening behavior. The collected data supports that distinct
behaviors can be differentiated.
3. FUTURE WORK
In the future, our goal is to identify cranes’ behavior us-
ing the on-board processing capabilities of the CraneTracker,
instead of logging an immense amount of data for post pro-
cessing. The experiment results shown in Figs. 1(b) and
1(c) motivate the feasibility of this approach. Moreover, our
initial work shown in a demonstration [2], proves that pro-
cessing behavior on the mote is possible. The next steps in
this process includes constructing a behavioral model, that
correctly identifies common behaviors and obscure behav-
iors from sensor readings with great probability. The de-
velopment of this model will require more experiments with
captive and free-living cranes, over longer sensing periods.
Effective on-board processing enabled by this model, will
be beneficial by reducing data stored and transmitted during
sensing missions. In addition, the reduction of data trans-
mitted could save a considerable amount of energy, extend
sensing mission life-time, and more importantly, be more
effective in the conservation of Whooping Cranes.
4. REFERENCES
[1] D. Anthony and et. al., “Sensing through the continent:
Towards monitoring migratory birds using cellular
sensor networks,” in Proc. ACM/IEEE IPSN ’12,
Beijing China, April 2012.
[2] W. Bennett and et. al., “Cranetracker: A multi-modal
platform for monitoring migratory birds on a
continental scale.” in ACM MobiCom ’10 Demo, Las
Vegas, NV, September 2011.
[3] A. Gleiss and et. al., “Making overall dynamic body
acceleration work: on the theory of acceleration as a
proxy for energy expenditure,”British Ecological
Society, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 2, pp.
23–33, Aug. 2011.
[4] E. Shepard and et al., “Identification of animal
movement patterns using tri-axial accelerometry,”
Endangered Species Research, vol. 10, pp. 47–60, March
2008.
[5] R. Wilson and et al., “Moving towards acceleration for
estimates of activity-specific metabolic rate in
free-living animals: the case of the cormorant,” British
Ecological Society, Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 75,
pp. 1081–1090, Sept. 2006.
[6] ——, “Prying into the intimate details of animal lives:
use of a daily diary on animals,” Endangered Species
Research, vol. 4, pp. 123–137, Jan. 2008.
120


Poster Abstract: Crane Charades: Behavior Identification
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