Distributed Adaptive Control of Mobile Sensor Networks: Coverage and Estimation Algorithms

This thesis deals with distributed adaptive control of mobile sensor networks. Mobile sensor network refers to a network of autonomous agents with sensors which can measure some phenomenon of interest. The particular problems investigated in this thesis are area coverage control problems and scalar field estimation using mobile sensor networks. The control and estimation algorithms we develop are distributed in the sense that each mobile agent or sensor requires only local information (information from the given agent and its neighbouring agents) for computing its control or update laws. The algorithms are adaptive in the sense that the density function is assumed to be unknown, and the algorithms are required to adapt for the unknown density function in order to achieve its objectives. We verify the algorithms developed using simulations or hardware experiments.