Drones and AI help Harvard team eavesdrop on sperm whales

Described in Science Robotics, the new technology was developed to support Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a major international programme aiming to capture millions of sperm whale vocalisations and ultimately understand how whales communicate. To do that, the CETI team must first identify spots where the tagged whales are likely to surface, so that the drones can maximise the number of times they rendezvous with the whales.

The CETI drones are equipped with very high frequency (VHF) signal sensing that uses signal phase and the drone’s motion to emulate an ‘antenna array in air’. Combining this with acoustic data from underwater sensors and pre-existing sperm whale motion models, the Harvard team has developed the AVATARS (Autonomous Vehicles for whAle Tracking And Rendezvous by remote Sensing) framework. AVATARS is a decision-making algorithm designed to increase the number of drone-whale interactions, ultimately helping Project CETI reach its goal quicker.