An Optimal Control Approach to the Persistent Monitoring Problem

Abstract

We propose an optimal control framework for persistent monitoring problems where the objective is to control the movement of mobile nodes to minimize an uncertainty metric in a given mission space. For multi agent in a one-dimensional mission space, we show that the optimal solution is obtained in terms of a sequence of switching locations and waiting time on these switching points, thus reducing it to a parametric optimization problem. Using Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis (IPA) we obtain a complete solution through a gradient-based algorithm. We also discuss a receding horizon controller which is capable of obtaining a near-optimal solution on-the-fly.

Technical Report accompanying CDC 2012 submission

References in corpus (1)

• Persistent Robotic Tasks: Monitoring and Sweeping in Changing Environments

Cited by in corpus (2)

• On Sensing, Agility, and Computation Requirements for a Data-gathering Agile Robotic Vehicle
• Persistent Monitoring in Discrete Environments: Minimizing the Maximum Weighted Latency Between Observations