Multidrone aerial surveys of penguin colonies in Antarctica
Multidrone aerial surveys of penguin colonies in Antarctica
复制标题
DOI：
10.1126/scirobotics.abc3000
复制
发表时间：
2020-10-21
期刊：
影响因子：
25
通讯作者：
Schwager, Mac
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Shah, Kunal;Ballard, Grant;Schwager, Mac
在野生动物调查中，由于动物在其整个环境中的动态运动以及天气的潜在极端变化，速度至关重要。在这项工作中，我们提出了一个多机器人的路径规划方法进行大面积的航空调查，旨在充分利用有限的飞行时间。不同于目前的调查路径规划解决方案的基础上的几何图案或整数规划，我们解决了一系列的可满足性模理论的情况下，越来越复杂。每个实例在每次迭代时产生一组可行路径，并在足够的时间后恢复最短路径集。我们用一组无人机实施了我们的规划算法，对克罗齐角进行了多次摄影空中野生动物调查，克罗齐角是世界上最大的阿德利企鹅殖民地之一，拥有超过30万对筑巢对。在大约3个小时内调查了2平方公里。相比之下，以前人类驾驶的无人机对同一殖民地的调查需要2天以上才能完成。我们的方法通过限制冗余行程来减少调查时间，同时还允许在调查期间随时安全召回无人机。我们的方法可以应用于其他领域，如在高风险天气条件下的野火调查或灾害响应。
Speed is essential in wildlife surveys due to the dynamic movement of animals throughout their environment and potentially extreme changes in weather. In this work, we present a multirobot path-planning method for conducting aerial surveys over large areas designed to make the best use of limited flight time. Unlike current survey path-planning solutions based on geometric patterns or integer programs, we solve a series of satisfiability modulo theory instances of increasing complexity. Each instance yields a set of feasible paths at each iteration and recovers the set of shortest paths after sufficient time. We implemented our planning algorithm with a team of drones to conduct multiple photographic aerial wildlife surveys of Cape Crozier, one of the largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world containing more than 300,000 nesting pairs. Over 2 square kilometers was surveyed in about 3 hours. In contrast, previous human-piloted single-drone surveys of the same colony required over 2 days to complete. Our method reduces survey time by limiting redundant travel while also allowing for safe recall of the drones at any time during the survey. Our approach can be applied to other domains, such as wildfire surveys in high-risk weather conditions or disaster response.