A distributed, bio-inspired coordination strategy for multiple agent systems applied to surveillance tasks in unknown environments

Multiple agent systems are applied to exploration and surveillance tasks. A new distributed coordination strategy, designed according to a modified version of the artificial ant system, is described. The strategy is able to adapt the current system dynamics if the number of robots or the environment structure or both change. Experiment simulations are executed to evaluate two versions of the strategy considering different multiple robot systems and environment structures. Results confirm that exploration and surveillance general behaviors emerge from the individual agent behavior. Different compiled data sets are considered to assess the strategies, namely: needed time to conclude the task; and time between two consecutive sensory on a specific region. The results show that the strategy is effective and relatively efficient to execute the exploration and surveillance tasks.