用预测运动提升嗅觉追踪效率,解决延迟干扰下的目标定位难题
Olfactory pursuit: catching a moving odor source in complex flows
- 构建联合信念模型,结合位置与速度估计进行决策
- 混合策略在不同运动持续时间下均接近最优,超越纯探索方法
- 适合复杂流场中机器人或生物的动态目标搜索任务
在不确定环境下定位并拦截移动目标是决策中的核心挑战,尤其在气味信号延迟、间歇且受湍流混合作用时更为严峻。本文将嗅觉追踪建模为部分可观测马尔可夫决策过程,代理需维护目标位置与速度的联合信念。通过离散的跑动-翻滚模型数值求解贝尔曼方程,计算准最优策略,并与信息论策略(如Infotaxis)对比。结果表明:当目标频繁转向时,纯探索策略近似最优;但面对持续运动目标则表现严重下降。为此提出一种高效混合策略,融合Infotaxis的信息增益驱动与基于全可观测控制问题的“贪婪”价值函数,该策略在所有持续时间下均达近最优性能,显著优于纯探索方法。此外,在连续跑动-翻滚运动、模型偏差及更精确的烟羽动力学模拟中仍表现出强鲁棒性。研究揭示了预测目标运动是有效嗅觉追踪的关键,为信息贫乏、动态演化环境下的搜索提供了通用框架。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Locating and intercepting a moving target from possibly delayed, intermittent sensory signals is a paradigmatic problem in decision-making under uncertainty, and a fundamental challenge for, e.g., animals seeking prey or mates and autonomous robotic systems. Odor signals are intermittent, strongly mixed by turbulent-like transport, and typically lag behind the true target position, thereby complicating localization. Here, we formulate olfactory pursuit as a partially observable Markov decision process in which an agent maintains a joint belief over the target's position and velocity. Using a discrete run-and-tumble model, we compute quasi-optimal policies by numerically solving the Bellman equation and benchmark them against well-established information-theoretic strategies such as Infotaxis. We show that purely exploratory policies are near-optimal when the target frequently reorients, but fail dramatically when the target exhibits persistent motion. We thus introduce a computationally efficient hybrid policy that combines the information-gain drive of Infotaxis with a "greedy" value function derived from an associated fully observable control problem. Our heuristic achieves near-optimal performance across all persistence times and substantially outperforms purely exploratory approaches. Moreover, our proposal demonstrates strong robustness even in more complex search scenarios, including continuous run-and-tumble prey motion with moderate persistence time, model mismatch, and more accurate plume dynamics representation. Our results identify predictive inference of target motion as the key ingredient for effective olfactory pursuit and provide a general framework for search in information-poor, dynamically evolving environments.
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