Near-optimal continuous patrolling with teams of mobile information gathering agents

摘要

Autonomous unmanned vehicles equipped with sensors are rapidly becoming the de facto means of achieving situational awareness — the ability to make sense of, and predict what is happening in an environment. Particularly in environments that are subject to continuous change, the use of such teams to maintain accurate and up-to-date situational awareness is a challenging problem. To perform well, the vehicles need to patrol their environment continuously and in a coordinated manner.