Cooperative decentralized circumnavigation with application to algal bloom tracking

Harmful algal blooms occur frequently and deteriorate water quality. A reliable method is proposed in this paper to track algal blooms using a set of autonomous surface robots. A satellite image indicates the existence and initial location of the algal bloom for the deployment of the robot system. The algal bloom area is approximated by a circle with time varying location and size. This circle is estimated and circumnavigated by the robots which are able to locally sense its boundary. A multi-agent control algorithm is proposed for the continuous monitoring of the dynamic evolution of the algal bloom. Such algorithm comprises of a decentralized least squares estimation of the target and a controller for circumnavigation. We prove the convergence of the robots to the circle and in equally spaced positions around it. Simulation results with data provided by the SINMOD ocean model are used to illustrate the theoretical results.