US Patent 7908040 System and method for automated search by distributed elements

A system and method for decentralized cooperative control of a team of agents for geographic and other search tasks. The approach is behavior-based and uses probability particle approach to the search problem. Agents are attracted to probability distributions in the form of virtual particles of probability that represent hypotheses about the existence of objects of interest in a geographic area or a data-space. Reliance on dependable, high-bandwidth communication is reduced by modeling the movements of other team members and the objects of interest between periodic update messages.