Airship Formations for Animal Motion Capture and Behavior Analysis
This work provides a solution for ecologists and wildlife researchers to study animal behavior in the wild with minimal disturbance, though it is incremental in applying existing airship technology to a new domain.
The researchers tackled the problem of using UAVs for wildlife observation by developing an airship formation system to track and record wild horses from multiple angles, addressing limitations of traditional UAVs like limited flight time and noise.
Using UAVs for wildlife observation and motion capture offers manifold advantages for studying animals in the wild, especially grazing herds in open terrain. The aerial perspective allows observation at a scale and depth that is not possible on the ground, offering new insights into group behavior. However, the very nature of wildlife field-studies puts traditional fixed wing and multi-copter systems to their limits: limited flight time, noise and safety aspects affect their efficacy, where lighter than air systems can remain on station for many hours. Nevertheless, airships are challenging from a ground handling perspective as well as from a control point of view, being voluminous and highly affected by wind. In this work, we showcase a system designed to use airship formations to track, follow, and visually record wild horses from multiple angles, including airship design, simulation, control, on board computer vision, autonomous operation and practical aspects of field experiments.