Cooperative and distributed decision-making in a multi-agent perception system for improvised land mines detection

Date

2020-06-25

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

1566-2535

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

This work presents a novel intelligent system designed using a multi-agent hardware platform to detect improvised explosive devices concealed in the ground. Each agent is equipped with a different sensor, (i.e. a ground-penetrating radar, a thermal sensor and three cameras each covering a different spectrum) and processes dedicated AI decision-making capabilities. The proposed system has a unique hardware structure, with a distributed design and effective selection of sensors, and a novel multi-phase and cooperative decision-making framework. Agents operate independently via a customised logic adjusting their sensor positions - to achieve optimal acquisition; performing a preliminary “local decision-making” - to classify buried objects; sharing information with the other agents. Once sufficient information is shared by the agents, a collaborative behaviour emerges in the so-called “cooperative decision-making” process, which performs the final detection. In this paper, 120 variations of the proposed system, obtained by combining both classic aggregation operators as well as advanced neural and fuzzy systems, are presented, tested and evaluated. Results show a good detection accuracy and robustness to environmental and data sets changes, in particular when the cooperative decision-making is implemented with the neuroevolution paradigm.

Description

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link

Keywords

land mine detection, improvised explosive device, neuroevolution, genetic fuzzy systems, feature extraction, sensor fusion

Citation

Florez-Lozano, J., Caraffini, F., Parra, C., Gongora, M. (2020) Cooperative and distributed decision-making in a multi-agent perception system for improvised land mines detection. Information Fusion, 64, pp. 32-49.

Rights

Research Institute