Toxic plume source localization in urban environments using collaborating robots

Abstract

The research work presented herein is part of a large effort in R&D of a physics-based approach to develop networks of mobile sensing agents for monitoring, tracking, reporting and responding to hazardous conditions such as those resulting from the release of a WMD. We present the development of an efficient and robust distributed collaborative search algorithm for a team of unmanned robots that must locate the emitter of a toxic plume in an urban setting. We aim to provide a scientific, yet practical, approach to the design and analysis of rapidly deployable, scalable, adaptive, cost-effective groups of autonomous robots to replace or complement humans in the hazardous task of localizing the source of toxic chemical, biological or radiological plumes. In our approach, the robot group coordination and control are based on a physics-based framework called physicomimetics, and the collaborative search algorithm, called fluxotaxis, is based on fluid mechanics.