| Summary: | This paper studies the cooperation method of multi-cooperative Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for chemical pollution source monitoring in a dynamic water environment. Multiple USVs formed a mobile sensor network in a symmetrical or asymmetrical formation. Based on ‘Infotaxis’ algorithms for multi-USV, an improved shared probability is proposed for solving the problems of low success rate and low efficiency resulting from the cognitive differences of multi-USV in cooperative exploration. By introducing the confidence factor, the cognitive differences between USVs are coordinated. The success rate and the efficiency of exploration are improved. To further optimize the exploration strategy, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is introduced into the ‘Infotaxis’ algorithm to plan the USVs’ exploration path. This method is called the ‘PSO-Infotaxis’ algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation and laboratory experiments. A comparison of the test results shows that the ‘PSO-Infotaxis’ algorithm is superior with respect to exploring efficiency. It can reduce the uncertainty of the estimation for source location faster and has lower exploration time, which is most important for the exploration of a large range of water areas.
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