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Robotics 2013, 2(1), 1-18; doi:10.3390/robotics2010001

Article

Ant Robotic Swarm for Visualizing Invisible Hazardous Substances

John Oyekan ^1,*  and Huosheng Hu ²

¹ Centre for Research in Distributed Technologies, University of Bedfordshire, Park Square, Luton, LU1 3JU, UK ² School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 8 November 2012; in revised form: 21 December 2012 / Accepted: 4 January 2013 / Published: 7 January 2013

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Centred Robotics)

Download PDF Full-Text [866 KB, uploaded 7 January 2013 13:29 CET]

Abstract: Inspired by the simplicity of how nature solves its problems, this paper presents a novel approach that would enable a swarm of ant robotic agents (robots with limited sensing, communication, computational and memory resources) form a visual representation of distributed hazardous substances within an environment dominated by diffusion processes using a decentralized approach. Such a visual representation could be very useful in enabling a quicker evacuation of a city’s population affected by such hazardous substances. This is especially true if the ratio of emergency workers to the population number is very small.

Keywords: bio-inspiration; ant agents; optimal coverage; pollution monitoring; bacterial foraging

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