What is Swarm

This paper considers the problem of tracking a mobile target in an obstructive environment using a swarm of simple robots with limited sensing and communicating abilities. The target-tracking procedure, which has not been paid attention in previous swarm robotic researches, is specially focused. In tracking phase of problem, the swarm should move with low energy cost while keeping the target in sight. This mobile target tracking (MTT) problem, is useful for practical applications, such as escorting, monitoring, group carrying and etc. A spring virtual force (SVF) model is proposed to solve MTT problem and is applied on a self-built simulation program written by the authors in both ideal and noisy environments. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed model has great advantages in finding target, saving energy and maintaining connectivity with fewer parameters, smaller computation overload and higher stability. The SVF model can achieve great performance even when there exists significant amount of noise.