Development and stability analysis of a cooperative search algorithm by multiple flying vehicles

The problem of finding a lost target in a noisy environment by a group of flying vehicles is studied in this article. The developed cooperative search algorithm that is decentrally applied on the flying vehicles is a combination of searching guidance and neighborhood laws. The searching guidance law generates an acceleration command to direct each flying vehicle to the position of the lost target. The command is generated based on the information gathered by those flying vehicles that are categorized as neighbors by the neighborhood law. The neighborhood law specifies the sharing network between the flying vehicles for intelligent cooperation. Various neighborhood laws are introduced for tuning the search exploration and exploitation, which influence the performance of the cooperative search algorithm. To evaluate this performance, two approaches are considered. The analytical approach shows that the search process is stable and convergent. In the second approach, numerical simulations demonstrate that properly selecting the neighborhood law significantly enhances the performance of the search.