Robotic Herding of Farm Animals Using a Network of Barking Aerial Drones

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel robotic animal herding system based on a network of autonomous barking drones. The objective of such a system is to replace traditional herding methods (e.g., dogs) so that a large number (e.g., thousands) of farm animals such as sheep can be quickly collected from a sparse status and then driven to a designated location (e.g., a sheepfold). In this paper, we particularly focus on the motion control of the barking drones. To this end, a computationally efficient sliding mode based control algorithm is developed, which navigates the drones to track the moving boundary of the animals’ footprint and enables the drones to avoid collisions with others. Extensive computer simulations, where the dynamics of the animals follow Reynolds’ rules, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.