Perceiving Systems Conference Paper 2024

Airship Formations for Animal Motion Capture and Behavior Analysis

Airship

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.

Award: (Best Paper)
Author(s): Eric Price and Aamir Ahmad
Book Title: Proceedings 2nd International Conference on Design and Engineering of Lighter-Than-Air systems (DELTAS2024)
Year: 2024
Month: June
Day: 26-30
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (conference)
Event Name: 2nd International Conference on Design and Engineering of Lighter-Than-Air systems (DELTAS2024)
Event Place: Bombay, India
State: Published
URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08986
Award Paper: Best Paper
Digital: True
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive
Links:

BibTex

@conference{2024_Price_Airship,
  title = {Airship Formations for Animal Motion Capture and Behavior Analysis},
  aword_paper = {Best Paper},
  booktitle = {Proceedings 2nd International Conference on Design and Engineering of Lighter-Than-Air systems (DELTAS2024)},
  abstract = {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.},
  month = jun,
  year = {2024},
  slug = {2024_price_airship},
  author = {Price, Eric and Ahmad, Aamir},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08986},
  month_numeric = {6}
}