Man Qi, Matthew Gadd, De Daniele Martini, Katrina Davis, Biao Xiong, Alice Rosen, Nick Hawes, Rob Salguero-Gomez

Human activities have caused rapid decline in biodiversity, with accelerating species extinction. Simultaneously, recent advancements in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems offer transformative potential for biodiversity research. Unmanned vehicles—such as drones, ground robots, and underwater robots—equipped with high-resolution sensors enhance our ability to monitor ecosystems with unprecedented efficiency and scale. Here, we review studies published in Web of Science (1930–2023) using unmanned vehicles for ecological monitoring and explore how it could be done more broadly to further biodiversity research. Drones are most commonly used for vegetation mapping, species monitoring, and habitat assessment in terrestrial ecosystems; ground and underwater robots focus on aquatic environments, supporting benthic surveys, water quality monitoring, and sample collection. Still, we identify key gaps: this growing body of research predominantly addresses plants (46%) and animals (44%), with minimal focus on microbes (10%). Additionally, key biodiversity hotspots—such as South Africa, Central America, and South America—are underrepresented. Our findings emphasise the need for expanded taxonomic and biogeographic efforts to maximise the impact of these technologies. We argue that, by incorporating innovative combination of unmanned vehicles, payloads, AI and in novel application scenarios, researchers could achieve cost-effective, accurate, and multi-scale ecological monitoring. Strengthening collaborations between ecologists and roboticists will advance biodiversity conservation and address pressing knowledge gaps in the Anthropocene.