In the field of wildlife conservation and studies, radio collars are commonplace. Wild animals are caught, collared, released into the wild and kept under observation. But the old way of doing things is leaving the biologist to later tramp over land to find the animal. It used to be an expensive and time-consuming ordeal.
This situation will change soon, thanks to a research team at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. The scientists have developed for the first time a drone that does all the labor-intensive work of tracking down a collared animal into the wild.
Scientists need to know where an animal moves in order to gather insight into a creature's daily life as well as improving wildlife conservation efforts and helping to protect land management laws.
The new drones designed by Australian scientists are made from components that can be easily bought anywhere. The lead researcher Debbie Saunders declared that, in order to adapt the drone to the specifics of wildlife tracking, her team removed the camera feature that usually came with a drone and replaced it with an antenna ad receiver designed to track in real-time a radio collar. The information received from the tracking drones can be used later to create territory and wild habitat maps, showing the animal's movement and current location.
Saunders explained that her team has developed the tracking drones originally to track endangered small migratory birds such as the swift parrot. But other animals are fine candidates for the tracking system too. The research team tested the drones for 150 hours on rat kangaroos, also known as bettongs. The findings of Saunders and her colleagues have shown by using the tracking drones the time it takes to monitor any of the animals in the wild could be greatly reduced.
According to Adrian Manning, an associate professor at Australian National University, by using the tracking drones two operators can perform tasks that use to take half a day before in only 20 minutes now.
The Australian research team recently presented their tracking drones project and the findings of their at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference in Rome, Italy.
