Mapping odour sources with a mobile robot in a time variant airflow environment

This paper focuses on the problem of mapping odour sources using a mobile robot in a time-variant airflow environment, and provides a localization method which uses the Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory to reason the possible locations of odour sources. In the proposed method, the robot carries out the D-S inference and iteratively updates a grid map, using the successive measurements from a gas sensor and an anemometer when the robot is cruising in the given search area. Simulations are carried out and the results in a time-variant airflow environment show that the locations of the multiple odour sources can be estimated online with the proposed method.