Distributed Estimation of the Geometric Center of Multi-target by a Group of Agents With Bearing Measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed estimation scheme for determining the geometric center of multiple targets by a group of agents in 2-dimensional space. These agents have the knowledge of bearing measurements to a part of the targets and communicate with each other. Specifically, we utilize a continuous-time dynamics with strong coupling among agents to process local information. This approach allows us to assign the equilibrium point of the dynamics describing collective behavior of the agents to the geometric center of the targets. The benefits of this approach include: (i) no initialization process is required and (ii) global information, such as the numbers of targets and agents, is not required. These properties make the proposed estimation method suitable for plug-and-play operation.