Distributed Target Localization and Encirclement with a Multi-Robot System

This paper presents a control scheme for localizing and encircling a target using a multi-robot system. The task is achieved in a distributed way, in that each robot only uses local information gathered by on-board relative-position sensors assumed to be noisy, anisotropic, and unable to detect the identity of the measured object. Communication between the robots is provided by limited-range transceivers. Experimental results with stationary and moving targets support the theoretical analysis.