Exploring the potential of collaborative UAV 3D mapping in Kenyan savanna for wildlife research

UAV-based biodiversity conservation applications have exhibited many data acquisition ad vantages for researchers. UAV platforms with embedded data processing hardware can sup port conservation challenges through 3D habitat mapping, surveillance and monitoring solutions. High-quality real-time scene reconstruction as well as real-time UAV localization can optimize the exploration vs exploitation balance of single or collaborative mission. In this work, we ex plore the potential of two collaborative frameworks- Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (V-SLAM) and Structure-from-Motion (SfM) for 3D mapping purposes and compare re sults with standard offline approaches.