Decentralized Bayesian Search Using Approximate Dynamic Programming Methods

  • Authors:
  • Yijia Zhao;S. D. Patek;P. A. Beling

  • Affiliations:
  • Dept. of Syst. & Inf. Eng., Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We consider decentralized Bayesian search problems that involve a team of multiple autonomous agents searching for targets on a network of search points operating under the following constraints: 1) interagent communication is limited; 2) the agents do not have the opportunity to agree in advance on how to resolve equivalent but incompatible strategies; and 3) each agent lacks the ability to control or predict with certainty the actions of the other agents. We formulate the multiagent search-path-planning problem as a decentralized optimal control problem and introduce approximate dynamic heuristics that can be implemented in a decentralized fashion. After establishing some analytical properties of the heuristics, we present computational results for a search problem involving two agents on a 5 times 5 grid.