Comparison study of low-cost obstacle sensing solutions for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in wildlife scenery

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for a wide variety of applications has been increasing during the latest years. For safe flying of UAVs, different types of obstacle sensing solutions towards collision avoidance have been presented. These solutions combine various types of on-board perception sensors to realize obstacle perception. Such sensors include optical cameras, infrared sensors, laser scanners, and ultrasonic sensors. The sensing capacity of these sensors determines the overall performance of the obstacle sensing solution. As a result, the selection of perception sensors becomes critical to achieving safe UAVs flights. This paper addresses a comparison overview study on the available low-cost obstacle sensing solutions for UAVs in wildlife environments. The cost, latency, precision, reliability, and performance across obstacles of different shapes, size, surfaces, and state (static or dynamic) in wildlife flying environments are of major concern. The main contribution of the paper includes the comparison on these critical aspects, followed by valuable recommendations on determining obstacle sensing solutions towards collision avoidance for wildlife UAVs.