Cooperative Multi-Robot Control for Monitoring an Expanding Flood Area

In this paper, a control strategy is developed for tracking the propagation of an expanding flood zone by using a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The strategy consists of two stages: a caging stage and a covering stage. In the caging stage, a group of UAVs, referring to the boundary drones, are averagely distributed along the boundary of the flood zone, tracking its propagation. In the covering stage, another group of UAVs, referring to the inner drones, are allocated among the interior region of the flood zone, covering the region as much as possible with less overlapping of the UAVs' field of view. Corresponding control algorithms are proposed for the aforementioned types of UAVs to implement the control strategy. The feasibility of the control strategy is verified under simulations.