Fig. 2

Illustration of the environmental exploration procedure: (1) Agents (visualized in red) are introduced into an unknown environment and record environmental and distance measurements for mapping and localization, respectively. The agents are carried by the fluid in the environment, e.g., water or oil. (2) The agents are extracted from the environment, and their data are sent to a fusion center to compute the agents’ trajectories (illustrated for two agents). Their environmental measurements are then used to compute, e.g., the temperature profile of the environment