Periodic optimal search control considering reduction of energy consumption

This paper investigates an optimal search problem under the assumption that a target to be found appears randomly and stays for a fixed time interval. We first formulate the search problem as an optimization problem to maximize the probability of finding the target while reducing the control energy consumption, and provide an approximate solution to this problem. Then, we clarify a necessary and sufficient condition for the agent´s behavior to converge to a periodic trajectory. We moreover present a cooperative search strategy of multi-agent systems. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is demonstrated through numerical simulation.