A survey of animal foraging for directed, persistent search by rescue robotics

This paper reviews the animal foraging literature for insights into the directed, persistent search problem in rescue robotics, where a robot may have to move away from a target or out of sensing range in order to find a path to it. The conclusions from 32 papers on empirical studies of insects, fish and birds, mammals, and 20 studies exploring theoretical models are that: robots should divide the environment into patches, they should follow a win-stay search strategy within a patch, use either a sensory- or pattern-based search algorithm, should adapt the algorithm to travel distance, total search time, physical obstacles, and availability of sensory information, and persistence should have a fixed time limit unless sensory information is available. The survey is expected to enable rescue roboticists to create better, or improve existing, search strategies and algorithms.