Information-Based Search for an Atmospheric Release Using a Mobile Robot: Algorithm and Experiments

• Published in: IEEE transactions on control systems technology Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 2388 - 2402
• Main Authors: Hutchinson, Michael, Liu, Cunjia, Chen, Wen-Hua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Computer simulation; Emergency response; Environmental monitoring; Gas sensors; Hazardous materials; Informative path planning; Low cost; Markov processes; mobile robot; Mobile robots; Parameter estimation; partially observable Markov decision process; Robot sensing systems; Robots; Search algorithms; Search problems; Sensors; source term estimation (STE)
• ISSN: 1063-6536; 1558-0865
• DOI: 10.1109/TCST.2018.2860548

Finding the location and strength of an unknown hazardous release is of paramount importance in emergency response and environmental monitoring; thus, it has been an active research area for several years known as source term estimation (STE). This paper presents a joint Bayesian estimation and planning algorithm to guide a mobile robot to collect informative measurements, allowing the source parameters to be estimated quickly and accurately. The estimation is performed recursively using Bayes' theorem, where uncertainties in the meteorological and dispersion parameters are considered and the intermittent readings from a low-cost gas sensor are addressed by a novel likelihood function. The planning strategy is designed to maximize the expected utility function based on the estimated information gain of the source parameters. Subsequently, this paper presents the first experimental result of such a system in turbulent, diffusive conditions, in which a ground robot equipped with the low-cost gas sensor responds to the hazardous source simulated by incense sticks. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed estimation and search algorithm for STE based on the mobile robot and the low-cost sensor.