Real-Time Distributed Multi-Robot Target Tracking via Virtual Pheromones

Actively searching for targets using a multi-agent system in an unknown environment poses a two-pronged prob-lem, where on the one hand we need agents to cover as much of the environment as possible and on the other have a higher density of agents where there are potential targets to maximize detection performance. This paper proposes a fully distributed solution for an ad hoc network of agents to cooperatively search an unknown environment and actively track found targets. The solution combines a distributed pheromone-based coverage control strategy with a distributed target selection mechanism.