Real-time data collection and decision making with drones will play an important role in precision livestock and farming. Drones are already being used in precision agriculture. Nevertheless, this is not the case for indoor livestock and farming environments due to several challenges and constraints. These indoor environments are limited in physical space and there is the localization problem, due to GPS unavailability. Therefore, this work aims to give a step toward the usage of drones for indoor farming and livestock management. To investigate on the drone positioning in these workspaces, two visual simultaneous localization and mapping (VSLAM)—LSD-SLAM and ORB-SLAM—algorithms were compared using a monocular camera onboard a small drone. Several experiments were carried out in a greenhouse and a dairy farm barn with the absolute trajectory and the relative pose error being analyzed. It was found that the approach that suits best these workspaces is ORB-SLAM. This algorithm was tested by performing waypoint navigation and generating maps from the clustered areas. It was shown that aerial VSLAM could be achieved within these workspaces and that plant and cattle monitoring could benefit from using affordable and off-the-shelf drone technology.

No abstract

This study aims to explore the communication capabilities for video crucial applications of two commercial drones—the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 and the Parrot Anafi—in a greenhouse environment. Experiments were conducted on Received Signal Strength (RSS), Round-Trip Time (RTT) and the throughput on 802.11n at the 2.4 GHz network. From the experiments, it was found that none of the UAVs have an isotropic radiation pattern. Indoor measurements close to the roof and the ground were more prone to signal degradation. Even though the RTT of the Parrot Anafi was higher than that of the AR.Drone 2.0, the Anafi in almost all cases managed to achieve higher throughput and lower path loss, proving its superiority for video application. In addition, the maximum distance that the Parrot Anafi could fly in the greenhouse without any video quality loss was 110 m, while the AR.Drone 2.0 was hardly able to reach 30 m. Finally, the effect of the propellers has an insignificant impact on the UAV connection characteristics in all tested scenarios.