We describe a challenging robotics deployment in a complex ecosystem to monitor a rich plant community. The study site is dominated by dynamic grassland vegetation and is thus visually ambiguous and liable to drastic appearance change over the course of a day and especially through the growing season. This dynamism and complexity in appearance seriously impact the stability of the robotics platform, as localisation is a foundational part of that control loop, and so routes must be carefully taught and retaught until autonomy is robust and repeatable. Our system is demonstrated over a 6-week period monitoring the response of grass species to experimental climate change manipulations. We also discuss the applicability of our pipeline to monitor biodiversity in other complex natural settings.

中文翻译：

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观察草的生长：自主生物多样性监测的长期视觉导航和任务规划

我们描述了复杂生态系统中具有挑战性的机器人部署，以监控丰富的植物群落。该研究地点以动态草原植被为主，因此视觉上模糊不清，并且在一天中，特别是在生长季节内，外观容易发生剧烈变化。这种外观上的动态性和复杂性严重影响了机器人平台的稳定性，因为本地化是控制环路的基础部分，因此必须仔细教授和重新教授路线，直到自主性变得强大且可重复。我们的系统经过六周的时间验证，监测草种对实验性气候变化操纵的反应。我们还讨论了我们的管道在其他复杂自然环境中监测生物多样性的适用性。