Flying Shepherds

Purpose and goal

The project will develop and demonstrate an autonomous dual-drone solution for digital livestock monitoring. By combining wide-area detection with individual data capture, the system aims to reduce manual labour, improve safety, and pave the way for practical swarm technology in civilian applications.

Expected effects and result

The project delivers a field demonstrator showing how two drones can autonomously collaborate to locate, track, and identify animals. Expected impacts include reduced workload, safer monitoring, increased productivity, and enabling more sustainable grazing systems, with scalable applications in other societal domains.

Planned approach and implementation

The project follows three phases: development of the dual-drone module and mission coordination; integration and field tests with AI detection and BLE scanning; and prototype validation and demonstration. Work is carried out with LiU, SLU, RISE and Vreta and concludes with Vinnova’s joint demonstration day.