The accurate and reliable remote herding of animals with a drone fleet is one of the most challenging tasks in intelligent livestock management in the future. To solve the labour shortage challenges in a remote area in regional Australia, we propose an autonomous barking drone fleet management system to detect and repulse a big flock of cattle in this paper. Specifically, we first designed a Barking Drones Fleet Management System (BDFMS), including: 1) the operational analysis with consideration of airspace, safety, animal welfare, sensor technology, and drone capabilities; 2) the drone fleet concept of operation consisting of network architecture and detect and repulse algorithm specification. Finally, conclusion and future works were listed. The conceptual design of autonomous barking drone fleet management will support an actual field application in future development.

RMIT University: Man Liang; Oakland University: Jun Chen