AERPSO - An adaptive exploration robotic PSO based cooperative algorithm for multiple target searching

Target searching with autonomous robots require an efficient target search method that considers their constraints and environmental characteristics. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a fantastic population-based optimization algorithm. It is often used in swarm robotics cooperative search jobs because of its inspiration resources and velocity updating function. Given the global optimization features of PSO, it is simple to converge on a particular location in a search environment and miss out on opportunities to learn more. This paper proposes an adaptive exploration robotic PSO (AERPSO) to solve multi-target search problems. The proposed method enhances the chances of exploring unexplored regions and helps with obstacle avoidance using evolutionary speed and aggregation degree. The adaptive inertia weight helps in enhanced exploration. The simulation results compiled from various simulation experiments show that AERPSO performs way ahead of the existing state-of-the-art techniques for target searching. The proposed algorithm improves the search time by approximately 40% and the detection rate by 25% in comparison with existing approaches. It balances exploration and exploitation to become an excellent approach for multi-target searching.