Computing and executing strategies for moving target search

We address the problem of searching for moving targets in large outdoor environments represented by height maps. To solve the problem we present a complete system that computes from an annotated height map a graph representation and search strategies based on worst-case assumptions about all targets. These strategies are then used to compute a schedule and task assignment for all agents. We improve the graph construction from previous work and for the first time present a method that computes a schedule to minimize the execution time. For this we consider travel times of agents determined by a path planner on the height map. We demonstrate the entire system in a real environment with an area of 700,000m² in which eight human agents search for two intruders using mobile computing devices (iPads). To the best of our knowledge this is the first demonstration of a search system applied to such a large environment.