Reactive persistent surveillance by heterogeneous multi-agents with energy constraint
摘要
When natural disasters occur, accurately assessing the situation in a changing environment requires rapid and persistent observation. This paper focuses on the problem of conducting persistent observations using heterogeneous multi-agents with different observation capabilities and maximum operational time. To enable long-term operations covering vast environments, agents must replenish energy resources such as batteries and fuel. In this research, we discuss a method for selecting the direction of movement for observation by calculating utility values based on mutual information and remaining energy. Since mutual information reflects the different observation capabilities of each agent type, agents can move to locations where they can obtain the most information through their own observations. Through utility value-based action determination, agents fundamentally decide their movement directions based on mutual information, but as their energy levels decrease, they become more likely to choose the shortest path to a supply station. To validate the proposed method, we conducted numerical experiments involving persistent observation simulations in two changing environments: a simplified artificial environment and an environment representing a large-scale disaster in progress. The experimental results confirm that our proposed method successfully enables heterogeneous multi-agents to perform reactive observations while resupplying energy.