Till Örebro universitet

Accidental or intentional releases of contaminants into the atmosphere pose risks to human health, the environment, the economy, and national security. In some cases there may be a single release from an unknown source, while in other cases there are fugitive emissions from multiple sources. The need to locate and characterize the sources efficiently - whether it be the urgent need to evacuate or the systematic need to cover broad geographical regions with limited resources - is shared among all cases. Efforts have begun to identify leaks with gas analyzers mounted on Mobile Robot Olfaction (MRO) systems, road vehicles, and networks of fixed sensors, such as may be based in urban environments. To test and compare approaches for gas-sensitive robots a truthful gas dispersion simulator is needed. In this paper, we present a unified framework to simulate gas dispersion and to evaluate mobile robotics and gas sensing technologies using ROS. This framework is also key to developing and testing optimization and planning algorithms for determining sensor placement and sensor motion, as well as for fusing and connecting the sensor measurements to the leak locations.