A supervisory approach for hazardous chemical source localization

Using plume-tracing mobile robots has the potential to detect emissions caused by dangerous sources such as early stage fire, toxic gas and explosives, without endangering human life during the detection and source localization process. Due to the remarkable advantageous of using multiple robots, a number of robots was introduced to locate an odor source in environments which have close relationship with human everyday life. A rule-based supervisory approach was proposed to coordinate robots for the localization of an odor source in a simple city environment, a complicated city environment and an indoor office environment respectively. A series of simulation have been conducted, and the effectiveness of the developed rule-based supervisory approach was verified.