Active sensing for target tracking: a Bayesian optimisation approach

Active sensing plays an essential role in searching and tracking a target without initial target state information. This paper studies the active sensing approach for sensor management problems using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles based on the received signal strength measurements of the target. A Bayesian optimisation-based approach is proposed which adopts the Gaussian process method to model the received signal strength in an area over time and then the expected improvement acquisition function is leveraged to decide where to take new measurements considering the uncertainty of the Gaussian process. A unique contribution of this paper consists of the designed spatial-temporal composite kernel function that accounts for the time-varying nature of the signal strength. Numerical results obtained from different measurement noise levels and varying initial Bayesian optimisation settings demonstrate that the proposed approach can efficiently schedule multiple unmanned aerial vehicles to locate the target within a minimum number of initial data. Particularly, it achieves at most 57% lower tracking error and 46% lower lost-track probability as compared to the benchmark approach.