Livestock Management on Grazing Field: A FANET Based Approach

Abstract

In recent times, designated grazing areas/fields or routes for livestock grazing are usually defined. Hence, their herding activities’ success relies on data extracted from aerial photographs. As such, a direct and cost-effective way of monitoring livestock for perimeter coverage and in other natural situations is required. This paper presents a coverage solution involving multiple interacting unmanned aerial vehicles. The presented approach is built on a graph, with geographic coordinates set such that several Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can successfully cover the area. The maximum flying time determines the number of UAVs employed for coverage. The proposed solution is thought to solve some practical problems encountered during the execution of the task with actual UAVs. It is suitable for long-term monitoring of animal behavior under various weather conditions and observing the relationship between livestock distribution and available resources on a grazing field. The simulation was carried out using MATLAB and aerial images from Google Earth.

Keywords

• livestock management
• FANET operations
• grazing field
• area surveillance