Surveillance in an Open Environment by Co-Operative Tracking amongst Sensor Enabled Robots

Abstract

Co-operative task execution amongst multiple agents is an important field for research today. In this paper we study a system for surveillance in an open environment using multiple sensor-enabled robots. These robots can detect and track a target using their sensors. Robots/Agents can also communicate amongst each other to coordinate in task execution. Agents maintain lists of (a) targets within their field of view (active list) and (b) targets in the field of view of their neighboring agents(reference list). Agents synchronize and update their lists on a periodic basis with each other using a shared communication channel. Back-off algorithm has been employed to prevent two agents transmitting information at the same time. Agents can also generate beacon requests to request help from other idle robots when they detect a new target that they are unable to track because of being currently assigned to track another target . Simulations have been carried out in Breve-3d, a tool for modeling multi agent systems. After modeling the robot, targets and the communication network in Breve, simulation runs were made to determine the effectiveness of tracking. Experimental results and inferences have been included. Experimental results indicate effective tracking of targets due to frequent synchronization and updating of active and reference lists.