Multi-Agent Exploration-Based Search for an Unknown Number of Targets

Abstract

This paper presents an active sensor fusion technique for multiple mobile agents (robots) to detect an unknown number of static targets at unknown positions. To process and fuse sensor measurements from the agents, we use a random finite set formulation with an iterated-corrector probability hypothesis density filter. Our main contribution is to introduce two different multi-agent planners to quickly find the targets. The planners make greedy decisions for the next state of each agent by maximizing an objective function consisting of target refinement and exploration components. We demonstrate the performance of our approach through a series of simulations using homogeneous and heterogeneous agents. The results show that our framework works better than a lawnmower baseline, and that a centralized version of the planner works best.