Decision Process of Autonomous Drones for Environmental Monitoring

Environmental monitoring has a key role to reduce the human effect on nature and wildlife. Due to intense tracking and observation tasks, environmental monitoring is an expensive solution. Autonomous observation is an open discussion to raise the efficiency of environmental monitoring and reduce the cost of operation. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are possible candidates with their proven success in monitoring and tracking. Thus, we are offering a decision process for the autonomy of drones in monitoring tasks. Our system is capable to fly autonomously, e.g., covering a given area, and able to perform certain tasks, e.g., identifying bottles. Our simulation results prove that autonomous drones can be used for a large variety of environmental monitoring tasks.