preprints.org > engineering > control & systems engineering > doi: 10.20944/preprints202103.0525.v1

Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Version 1 : Received: 19 March 2021 / Approved: 22 March 2021 / Online: 22 March 2021 (11:59:55 CET)

This paper addresses a wildlife monitoring problem using a team of UAVs for efficient monitoring of wildlife. The state-of-the-art technology using UAVs has been an increasingly popular tool to monitor wildlife compared to the traditional methods such as satellite imagery-based sensing or GPS trackers. However, there still exist unsolved problems as to how the UAVs need to cover a spacious domain to detect animals as many as possible. In this paper, we propose the optimal transport-based wildlife monitoring strategy for a multi-UAV system, to prioritize monitoring areas while incorporating complementary information such as GPS trackers and satellite-based sensing. Through the proposed scheme, the UAVs can explore the large-size domain effectively and collaboratively with a given priority. The time-varying nature of wildlife due to their movements is modeled as a stochastic process, which is included in the proposed work to reflect the spatio-temporal evolution of their position estimation. In this way, the proposed monitoring plan can lead to efficient wildlife monitoring with a high detection rate. Various simulation results including statistical data are provided to validate the proposed work.

Wildlife Monitoring; Multi-UAV System; Optimal Transport