Radio tagging and tracking are fundamental to understanding the movements and habitats of wildlife in their natural environments. 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, counterproductive 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.

中文翻译：

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ConservationBots：自主空中机器人，可在复杂地形中快速稳健地跟踪野生动物

无线电标记和跟踪对于了解野生动物在自然环境中的活动和栖息地至关重要。如今，最广泛、最广泛应用的数据收集技术依赖于经验丰富的科学家，他们配备手持式无线电遥测设备，从地面定位附着在野生动物身上的低功率无线电发射器。尽管空中机器人可以改变劳动密集型的保护任务，但实现在现实条件下处理任务复杂性的自主系统仍然是一个挑战。我们开发了ConservationBots——小型空中机器人，用于跟踪多种动态的、带有无线电标记的野生动物。该空中机器人实现了强大的定位性能和快速的任务完成时间，这对于能量有限的空中系统非常重要，同时避免了与野生动物的潜在的、适得其反的干扰的近距离接触。我们的方法克服了将轻型传感器与新概念相结合所带来的技术和实际问题：（i）规划确定由信息论目标引导的轨迹和测量动作，这使得机器人能够战略性地选择近瞬时范围测量以实现更快的定位，以及耗时的传感器旋转动作以获取方位测量并实现稳健的跟踪性能；(ii) 抗噪声能力更强的方位检测器；(iii) 跟踪算法公式对于现实条件下的漏检和误检具有鲁棒性。我们进行了广泛的研究：基于不同地理地形上高分辨率高程数据的复杂信号传播进行模拟；现场测试；对袋熊（Lasiorhinus latifrons；居住在地下栖息地的夜间活动的脆弱物种）进行研究，并与经验丰富的生物学家进行跟踪比较，以验证我们的空中机器人的有效性，并证明其相对于手动方法的显着优势。