Multiple Chemical Sources Localization Using Virtual Physics-Based Robots with Release Strategy

This paper presents a novel method of simultaneously locating chemical sources by a virtual physics-based multirobot system with a release strategy. The proposed release strategy includes setting forbidden area, releasing the robots from declared sources and escaping from it by a rotary force and goal force. This strategy can avoid the robots relocating the same source which has been located by other robots and leading them to move toward other sources. Various turbulent plume environments are simulated by Fluent and Gambit software, and a set of simulations are performed on different scenarios using a group of six robots or parallel search by multiple groups’ robots to validate the proposed methodology. The experimental results show that release strategy can be successfully used to find multiple chemical sources, even when multiple plumes overlap. It can also extend the operation of many chemical source localization algorithms developed for single source localization.