Abstract-This paper presents a multi-agent algorithm to address the source-seeking problem in which the task is to locate the source of some signal (e.g., a radio transmitter, a location of chemical contamination, etc.). This algorithm is based on the formation control work of another researcher in which they designed a control structure to stabilize a group of non-holonomic vehicles to a circular formation and also to move that formation by changing the location of its center. The source-seeking algorithm builds on these results by providing an outer-loop control law to move this circular formation towards a source. The resulting control law depends only on direct measurements of the signal to calculate an approximate gradient direction which is then used to steer the formation. Under certain assumptions about the spatial propagation of the signal this algorithm causes the center of the agents' formation to asymptotically converge to the location of the source.

Abstract-This note demonstrates how the distributed auction algorithm can be modified to assign mobile agents to spatially distributed tasks despite communication delays and the fact that agent movement may cause the benefit associated with each possible agent-task assignment to vary during the execution of the algorithm. Bounds on the convergence time of the algorithm and the sub-optimality of the resulting solution are provided. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to show the conditions under which the modified distributed auction can outperform centralized calculation.Index Terms-Author, please supply your own keywords or send a blank e-mail to keywords@ieee.org to receive a list of suggested keywords.

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