Swarm robotic odor localization

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of odor localization by groups of autonomous mobile robots using principles of swarm intelligence. We describe a distributed algorithm by which groups of agents can solve the full odor localization task more efficiently than a single agent. We then demonstrate that a group of real robots under fully distributed control can successfully traverse a real odor plume. Finally, we show that an embodied simulator can faithfully reproduce the real robots experiments and thus can be a useful tool for off-line study and optimization of odor localization in the real world.