Improving object tracking through distributed exploration of an information map

Tracking the position of moving objects requires tight coordination of sensing and movement, in both biological contexts such as prey pursuit and capture, and in target localization by mobile robots. Algorithms for target tracking often use a probabilistic map, or information map, of the domain to guide active search. Though it is reasonable to expect that the best approach would be to choose control actions driving the robot toward the maximum of this information map, we show improved performance in simulation by using a simple heuristic incorporating the time history of robot movement into the map. Furthermore, our results indicate that as the distribution of robot positions approaches the distribution of the density of information, the variance of the estimate is decreased and tracking improves. We conclude that control actions based solely on information maximization may under-perform in information orientated tasks, such as the estimation of moving target positions.