Cooperative Pursuit Method for Multiple Underwater Robots Based on Distributed Muti-sensor Information Fusion

This paper presents a cooperative pursuit method for addressing the problem of pursuing a single moving target with underwater robots. To achieve this, the cooperative pursuit problem was divided into three basic processes including the target estimation, the optimization decision, and the cooperative control. Among them, the estimation information of the target is obtained by the method based on distributed multi-sensor information fusion. The desired target pursuit points, which are reached by underwater robots, are dynamically and adaptively allocated based on the estimated information of the target. Meanwhile, the consistency theory is used to realize the real-time online tracking of dynamic pursuit points, so as to realize the whole pursuit process. Finally, the cooperative pursuit method of underwater robots is verified with the MOOS (Mission Oriented Operating Suite, developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) numerical simulation platform, and the effectiveness of the method is proved by simulation results repeatedly.