Radio telemetry is a commonly used technique in conservation biology and ecology, particularly for studying the movement and range of individuals and populations. Traditionally, most radio telemetry work is done using handheld directional antennae and either direction-finding and homing techniques or radio-triangulation techniques. Over the past couple of decades, efforts have been made to utilize unmanned aerial vehicles to make radio-telemetry tracking more efficient, or cover more area. However, many of these approaches are complex and have not been rigorously field-tested. To provide scientists with reliable quality tracking data, tracking systems need to be rigorously tested and characterized. In this paper, we present a novel, drone-based, radio-telemetry tracking method for tracking the broad-scale movement paths of animals over multiple days and its implementation and deployment under field conditions. During a 2-week field period in the Cayman Islands, we demonstrated this system's ability to localize multiple targets simultaneously, in daily 10 min tracking sessions over a period of 2 weeks, generating more precise estimates than comparable efforts using manual triangulation techniques.

中文翻译：

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使用无人机定位动物的更精确方法

无线电遥测是保护生物学和生态学中常用的技术，特别是用于研究个体和种群的运动和范围。传统上，大多数无线电遥测工作是使用手持定向天线以及测向和导航技术或无线电三角测量技术完成的。在过去的几十年里，已经努力利用无人驾驶飞行器来提高无线电遥测跟踪的效率或覆盖更多的区域。然而，这些方法中有许多是复杂的，并且没有经过严格的现场测试。为了向科学家提供可靠的质量跟踪数据，跟踪系统需要经过严格的测试和表征。在本文中，我们提出了一种新颖的、基于无人机的、用于跟踪动物多日大范围运动路径的无线电遥测跟踪方法及其在现场条件下的实施和部署。在开曼群岛为期 2 周的实地考察期间，我们展示了该系统在 2 周内每天 10 分钟跟踪会话中同时本地化多个目标的能力，生成比使用手动三角测量技术的可比工作更精确的估计。