Tick 6 — 2026-05-22 03:55 UTC

Thread: R10 (through-foliage wildlife sensing) Verdict: Physics feasibility + per-species gait taxonomy + bounded range estimates.

What shipped

• examples/research-sota/r10_foliage_attenuation.py — ITU-R P.833-9 vegetation attenuation model + ESP32-S3 link-budget solver + per-species gait band table.
• examples/research-sota/r10_foliage_results.json — full machine-readable numbers.
• docs/research/sota-2026-05-22/R10-through-foliage-wildlife.md — research note with range table, gait taxonomy, vertical applications, honest scope.

Headline numbers (this tick)

Max ESP32-S3 sensing range through foliage (121 dB link budget, 10 dB SNR margin):

Frequency	Sparse	Moderate	Dense
2.4 GHz	99.6 m	12.0 m	4.1 m
5 GHz	19.9 m	5.2 m	2.1 m

The 2.4 GHz / sparse cell (~100 m) is the practical sweet spot — 10× the spatial coverage of a camera trap in matched conditions, always-on rather than PIR-triggered.

Per-species gait taxonomy (DSP-actionable):

• 0.5–1.5 Hz: bear, sloth, wild boar
• 1.2–2.5 Hz: human walking
• 1.5–3.5 Hz: elk, raccoon, wolf
• 1.8–4.5 Hz: deer, fox
• 4.0–15.0 Hz: squirrel, mouse, songbird

10-20 year verticals catalogued

• Endangered-species population census (replaces camera traps)
• Wildlife corridor verification
• Invasive-species early warning
• Poaching detection (human gait band well-separated from wildlife)
• Livestock-on-rangeland tracking
• Agricultural pest control

Coordination

Tick-6 used the same ticks/tick-N.md convention to avoid PROGRESS.md races.

Major out-of-tick news (horizon-tracker just completed)

Horizon-tracker agent a62cf580… reported full M1–M7 completion: 6 MCP tools, 6 CLI subcommands, ADR-104, 16 passing tests. Final summary in HORIZON.md. The MCP/CLI track is structurally complete; npm publish handoff is documented for the user.