Search Algorithm for Teams of Heterogeneous Agents with Coverage Guarantees

Amongcommonintelligence,reconnaissance,andsurveillancetasks,searchingforatarget in a complex environment is a problem for which autonomous systems are well suited. This workconsiderstheproblemofsearchingfortargetsusingateamofheterogeneousagents.The systemmaintainsagrid-basedworldmodelwhichcontainsinformationabouttheprobability that a target is located in a given cell of the map. Agents formulate control decisions for a fixed number of time steps using a modular algorithm that allows parameterizations of agent capabilities.This paper investigates a solution that guarantees total map coverage.The control law for each agent does not require explicit knowledge of other agents. This yields a systemwhichisscalabletoalargenumberofvehicles.Theresultingsearchpatternsguarantee an exhaustive search of the map in the sense that all cells will be searched sufficiently to ensure that the probability of a target going unnoticed is driven to zero. Modifications to this algorithm for explicit cooperation between agents is also investigated.

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