A swarm-based fuzzy logic control mobile sensor network for hazardous contaminants localization

We describe a swarm-based fuzzy logic control (FLC) mobile sensor network approach for collaboratively locating the hazardous contaminants in an unknown large-scale area. The mobile sensor network is composed of a collection of distributed nodes (robots), each of which has limited sensing, intelligence and communication capabilities. An ad-hoc wireless network is established among all nodes, and each node considers other nodes as extended sensors. By gathering other nodes´ locations and measurement data, each node´s FLC can independently determine its next optimal deployment location. Simultaneously, by applying the three properties of the swarm behavior: separation, cohesion and alignment, the approach can ensure the sensor network attains wide regional coverage and dynamically stable connectivity. The simulation presented in this paper shows the swarm-based FLC mobile sensor network can achieve better performance and have higher fault tolerance in the event of partial node failures and sensor measurement errors.