Tracking wildlife with multiple UAVs: System design, safety and field experiments

We present a multi-UAV system capable of localizing radio tagged animals. Each UAV carries a Yagi antenna and is capable of obtaining bearing-measurements by using the directionality of the signal emitted from the tag. In this paper, we address the following question: given a set of measurement locations, should the UAVs move in coordination and obtain synchronized measurements, or should they move independently? For each scenario, we present a path planning algorithm. The algorithms are compared in simulations. We also present a complete system implementation with three UAVs and results from field experiments.