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Hauptverfasser: Silva, Thales C., Kiran, Anoop, Ayanian, Nora
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24125
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author Silva, Thales C.
Kiran, Anoop
Ayanian, Nora
author_facet Silva, Thales C.
Kiran, Anoop
Ayanian, Nora
contents We consider the problem of combining potential field and ergodic search on multi-robot systems. Traditional ergodic search algorithms use metrics for ergodicity that account for the desired distribution at different scales. Recently, a heat equation-driven ergodic approach was proposed, which adds flexibility to the smoothing of the ergodic metric. However, such an approach, as it is an isotropic diffusion, propagates the error uniformly in all directions, regardless of changes in the desired distribution. We introduce a general class of anisotropic diffusion formulation of the ergodicity problem, which generates a potential field for the ergodic search. We demonstrate that this approach generalizes previous results, which consider radial basis functions and the solution of the heat equation to represent the difference between the goal density distribution and the covered trajectories. In our solution, the agent movement is directed using the gradient of the solution of the Perona-Malik diffusion, and our formulation includes the heat equation as a special case. We demonstrate the methodology with a series of simulations in different scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_24125
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anisotropic Diffusion-Driven Ergodic Coverage in Multi-Robot Systems
Silva, Thales C.
Kiran, Anoop
Ayanian, Nora
Robotics
We consider the problem of combining potential field and ergodic search on multi-robot systems. Traditional ergodic search algorithms use metrics for ergodicity that account for the desired distribution at different scales. Recently, a heat equation-driven ergodic approach was proposed, which adds flexibility to the smoothing of the ergodic metric. However, such an approach, as it is an isotropic diffusion, propagates the error uniformly in all directions, regardless of changes in the desired distribution. We introduce a general class of anisotropic diffusion formulation of the ergodicity problem, which generates a potential field for the ergodic search. We demonstrate that this approach generalizes previous results, which consider radial basis functions and the solution of the heat equation to represent the difference between the goal density distribution and the covered trajectories. In our solution, the agent movement is directed using the gradient of the solution of the Perona-Malik diffusion, and our formulation includes the heat equation as a special case. We demonstrate the methodology with a series of simulations in different scenarios.
title Anisotropic Diffusion-Driven Ergodic Coverage in Multi-Robot Systems
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24125