Cooperative decentralised circumnavigation with application to algal bloom tracking
Joana Fonseca, Jieqiang Wei, Karl H. Johansson, Tor Ame Johansen
Abstract
Harmful algal blooms occur frequently and deteriorate water quality. A reliable method is proposed in this paper to track algal blooms using a set of autonomous surface robots. A satellite image indicates the existence and initial location of the algal bloom for the deployment of the robot system. The algal bloom area is approximated by a circle with time varying location and size. This circle is estimated and circumnavigated by the robots which are able to locally sense its boundary. A multi-agent control algorithm is proposed for the continuous monitoring of the dynamic evolution of the algal bloom. Such algorithm comprises of a decentralised least squares estimation of the target and a controller for circumnavigation. We prove the convergence of the robots to the circle and in equally spaced positions around it. Simulation results with data provided by the SINMOD ocean model are used to illustrate the theoretical results.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2019_cooperativedecen,
title = {Cooperative decentralised circumnavigation with application to algal bloom tracking},
author = {Joana Fonseca and Jieqiang Wei and Karl H. Johansson and Tor Ame Johansen},
booktitle = {IROS 2019},
year = {2019}
}