MSc Thesis

Title

Effects of Standardized Quadcopter Flight Patterns on Foraging Birds: a Test Case for Autonomous Data Gathering in Ecological Research

Student(s)

Rinus Bot

Year

2016

Abstract

The quickly increasing prevalence of Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV’s), will have animals confronted with them in unexpected ways. In this paper it is argued that research concerning interactions between animals and UAV’s, should be developed from a perspective of scalable, autonomous, data gathering. A research setup that is designed from that perspective, with a focus on birds, is presented and its feasibility as a successful data gathering setup is assessed by means of a test case. This test case shows, that in response to quadcopter flight, carrion crows avoid a foraging site, egyptian geese are unaffected, and eurasian magpies and jackdaws shorten their visit duration. As this successful test case supports usability of the proposed setup, current shortcomings and future opportunities in this direction are discussed.

Keywords

Animal-robot interaction, animal welfare, UAV, bird disturbance, scalable research, autonomous data gathering, citizen science

Full Reference

Rinus Bot, "Effects of Standardized Quadcopter Flight Patterns on Foraging Birds: a Test Case for Autonomous Data Gathering in Ecological Research", Master's Thesis for the Media Technology programme, Leiden University (The Netherlands), 2016