From: AAAI Technical Report SS-02-04. Compilation copyright © 2002, AAAI (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
Tracking
Anonymous Targets
using
Network
a Robotic
Sensor
Boyoon Jung and Gaurav S. Sukhatme
Robotics Research Lab
University of Southern California
Weaddress
theproblem
oftracking
multiple
anonymous
targets
using
a networkofcommunicating
robots
andstationary
sensors.
We introduce
a regionbased
approach
which
controls
robot
deployment
attwolevels.
A coarse
deploymentcontroller
distributes
robots
across
regions
usinga topological
mapand
density
estimates,
anda target-following
controller
attempts
tomaximize
the
number
oftracked
targets
within
a region.
A behavior-based
system
ispresented
implementing
theregion-based
approach.
Intensive
simulations
wereperformed
toinvestigate
thecorrelation
between
ourapproach
andthedegree
ofocclusionintheenvironment.
Theregion-based
approach
showsbetter
performance
than a ’naive’ local-following strategy whenthe environmenthas significant occlusion. Weperformed real-robot experiments to validate the system. These
experiments open up a new line of research, which suggests that an optimal
ratio of robots to stationary sensors mayexist for a given environmentwith
certain occlusioncharacteristics.
2O