Cooperative Target Tracking in a Distributed Autonomous Sensor Network

This paper describes an investigation into the control of multiple, cooperating autonomous sensor platforms operating in a marine sensor network. Distributed sensors allow us to view phenomena of interest from multiple, simultaneous vantage points, creating significant processing gain from the spatial diversity. 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, an intelligent 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 allows reactive control in complex environments with multiple constraints. Experimental results are presented for a 2-D target tracking application in which a pair of fully autonomous surface craft using simulated bearing sensors acquire and track a moving target. From these results, it is readily seen that there is the potential for potent synergy from the cooperation of multiple sensor platforms