Adaptive Control of Heterogeneous Marine Sensor Platforms in an Autonomous Sensor Network

This paper describes an investigation into the control of autonomous mobile sensor platforms in a marine sensor network used to provide monitoring of transitory phenomenon over a wide area. A distributed network of small, inexpensive vehicles with heterogeneous sensors allows us to build a robust monitoring network capable of real-time response to rapidly changing sensor data. The major objective of this paper is to describe a framework for adaptive and cooperative control of the autonomous sensor platforms in such a network. This framework has two major components, a sensor that provides high-level state information to a behavior-based autonomous vehicle control system and a new approach to behavior-based control of autonomous vehicles using multiple objective functions that allow reactive control in complex environments with multiple constraints. Experimental results are presented for a 2-D target tracking application using a network of autonomous surface craft in which one platform with a simulated bearing sensor tracks a moving target and relays the target state information to a second vehicle that is moving in a classification mode. From these results, it is readily seen that there is the potential for potent synergy from the cooperation of multiple sensor platforms which can each view an event of interest from a different vantage point