Cooperative control of a multi-robot system for odor source localization

This paper deals with the problem of odor source localization based on a multi-robot system. A cooperative control solution is proposed to coordinate multiple mobile robots to locate the source of odor. The proposed solution is independently executed by each robot and consists of four levels. In the first level, a Kalman filter is used to estimate the position of the odor source in terms of wind information and detection events. In the second level, the idea of particle swarm optimization is introduced to improve the precision of the estimated position. In the third level, a movement trajectory is planned according to the resulting position in order that the robot can more probably detect the odor during the movement. In the fourth level, a control algorithm is designed to enable the robot to move along the movement trajectory. Finally, the performance capabilities of the proposed cooperative control solution are illustrated for odor source localization. © 2011 IEEE.