3-D Adaptive Navigation: Multirobot Formation Control for Seeking and Tracking of a Moving Source

Adaptive navigation enables a vehicle to autonomously modify its direction or motion path based on real-time measurements. This may be advantageous to achieve more time- and energy-efficient exploration of the scalar characteristics of an unknown and possibly dynamic region of interest (e.g., temperature, magnetic field, concentration level, etc.). Capabilities include finding local maximum/minimum points and following contours within the scalar field of interest. These capabilities have the potential to benefit a variety of applications such as environmental monitoring, disaster response, and exploration. This paper documents the initial results of a comprehensive program to develop, verify, and experimentally implement 3-dimensional adaptive navigation capability using the author's multilayer control architecture. This initial work focuses on source seeking/tracking, and describes the approach used for formation control of an appropriate multirobot formation, estimation of a field gradient, and the adaptive navigation control policy. Simulation results verify the functionality of this work for a fixed formation geometry navigating in both static and dynamic scalar fields.