Studying Exploitation and Exploration Trade-Off of Cognitive Odour-Guided Search

Cognitive search strategies are highly suitable for Odour Source Localisation (OSL) under turbulent flow conditions where continuous cues are not always available. While reliable, these methods have a known tendency to shift the weight of the search towards exploration, which increases the time and distance required to locate the source. Balancing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation (EE) is crucial since it can directly influence the efficiency and reliability of the mission. However, its understanding from a motion decision perspective still remains unclear with most conclusions being drawn from visual interpretation of the search trajectories or from results of performance metrics. This work aims to study the EE trade-off of cognitive OSL actions by identifying movement patterns and quantifying their values for multiple metrics associated with the decision. A large number of experiments were performed under realistic simulated environments, with the results showing the emergence of multiple well-defined movement patterns and EE tendencies that remain identical across different scenarios.