Decentralised multi-platform search for a hazardous source in a turbulent flow

The paper presents a cognitive strategy that enables an interconnected group of autonomous vehicles (moving robots) to search and localise a source of hazardous emissions (gas, biochemical particles) in a coordinated manner. Dispersion of the emitted substance is assumed to be affected by turbulence, resulting in the absence of concentration gradients. The key feature of the proposed search strategy is that it can be applied in a completely decentralised manner as long as the communication network of autonomous vehicles forms a connected graph. By decentralised operation we mean that each moving robot performs computations (i.e. source estimation and robot motion control) locally. Coordination is achieved by exchanging the data with the neighbours only, in a manner which does not require global knowledge of the communication network topology.