Optimal Drone Routing for Seal Pup Counts

We introduce the seal pup count using drones problem. Drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are used to fly over a marine archipelago during the birthing season to estimate the number of harbour seal pups. Pup counts are used as an environmental indicator of ecosystem health and as inputs to national wildlife management policies. We determine minimum cost routes for the UAVs to collect data for the seal pup count, subject to drone battery capacity. The Drone Routing Problem (DRP) can be formulated as a variant of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). We demonstrate the DRP on a real case study in the Kosterhavet National Park area in Sweden.