Autonomous Pest Bird Deterring for Agricultural Crops Using Teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

An algorithm for autonomous bird deterring using teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is being proposed in this paper. Birds cause significant damage to commercial crops globally. A bird deterring system using autonomous UAVs can potentially overcome the limitations of current bird management methods. The problem of controlling UAVs to deter birds is formulated as a model predictive control problem. Occupancy gird map is used to construct a world model which represents the system’s knowledge of the current location of target birds. A bird behaviour model and a sensor model are derived based on experimental results from a series of field trials. The future state of the target is estimated by propagating the centralised world model in time. Cooperative deterring missions are planned autonomously by optimising cost functions assigned to each UAV. A series of simulated scenarios are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system at driving UAVs to protect an 8 hectare area from multiple bird flocks. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that by cooperating a team of two UAVs, the same bird deterring mission can be completed more efficiently compared to using a single UAV.