Boundary Surveillance Using a Unicycle: A Limited Information Approach

The paper addresses the problem of boundary surveillance of a region using a single agent modelled as a unicycle. It has a constant forward speed and is controlled using only its angular speed. In the given framework, only range information is available to the agent. The problem of boundary surveillance in this constrained framework is achieved using a peripheral switching strategy. In this strategy, target points are distributed uniformly along the boundary. Then, the agent uses a continuous function of range as input to generate trajectories about the targets, hence, the boundary points. The advantage of the proposed strategy is that surveillance is achieved in a minimal information set up using an agent constrained moving at a constant speed. These theoretical results are illustrated through numerical simulation.