Diffusion-based guidance system for autonomous agents

Search strategy is an important component of any system that uses autonomous agents to detect and neutralize mines. We describe a simple and efficient search strategy derived from research on the adaptive spatial behavior of animals. Electromagnetic sensor data are processed to obtain a discrete spatial target distribution. The target distribution is used as input for a dynamic diffusion process. The diffusion surface is used by the demining agent to optimize its spatial moves through a hill climbing technique. The agent chooses to move to the position with the highest diffusion surface value. If the same diffusion surface is available to all agents, the system can be scaled to guide an indefinite number of independent, non-interfering agents.