Cooperative Level Curve Tracking in Advection-Diffusion Fields

Abstract

Level curve tracking in a spatial-temporal varying field is an important problem in many applications such as tracking and monitoring the propagation of a wildfire. In this paper, we investigate the level curve tracking problem using a collaborating group of sensing agents in an advection-diffusion field with obstacles. We implement a cooperative Kalman filter that takes into consideration the spatial-temporal varying property of the field to estimate the field value and gradient at two consecutive time steps, which are used in the motion control law that applies to the center of the agent formation so that the center of the formation is able to detect and track a desired level curve value in the advection-diffusion field. Obstacle avoidance is considered in the motion control law design. Simulations show satisfactory results of the proposed strategy.