Distributed Multi-Robot Ergodic Coverage Control for Estimating Time-Varying Spatial Processes

We present a fully distributed framework for multi-robot exploration and coverage of time-varying spatial processes in complex, non-convex environments.Building on heat-equation-driven adaptive coverage (HEDAC) and system ergodicity, the proposed approach enables robots to autonomously navigate arbitrary domains, reconstruct unknown spatial fields, and continuously balance exploration and coverage without centralized coordination. A temporal decay mechanism promotes adaptive monitoring by regulating the relevance of past observations. Simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the method.