HRA Laboratory

Tracking micro-sized insects to preserve ecosystems and biodiversity is one of the main challenges. To track the location of insects active in a wide area, robot-based active and autonomous tracking systems are required to improve the performance of traditional human-based passive tracking. Therefore, we propose a UAV-based active tracking and mapping system based on radio telemetry. This study introduces a total of three methods of tracking systems consisting of rotational UAV (RU), multi-antenna (MA), and rotational antenna (RA). First, the RU system estimates the relative distance and direction of the target based on the radio signal strength by fixing the directional Yagi-antenna to the rotating UAV. To address the low precision and slow speed of RU-based tracking, we developed the MA tracking system that estimates the three-dimensional position of the target using three omnidirectional whip antennas, consisting of two terrestrial and one aerial type. Finally, we designed the RA-based approach to simplify the tracking system while addressing the tracking distance, precision, and speed. This study covers how the system architecture was configured, which radio propagation models were used considering the insect tracking environments, which filters were designed to reduce measurement error, how radio signals from multiple antennas were synthesized, which control algorithms were developed for autonomous tracking of mobile robots, and which mechanisms were applied to rotational systems. The effectiveness of the proposed system for localization and autonomously tracking the target was verified and evaluated via dynamic simulation and field tests. This study presents a novel approach based on a mobile robot for active and autonomous tracking of micro-sized insects.