A swarm-based fuzzy logic control mobile sensor network for hazardous contaminants localization

Abstract

We describe a swarm-based fuzzy logic control (FLC) mobile sensor network approach for collaboratively locating the hazardous contaminants in an unknown large-scale area. The mobile sensor network is composed of a collection of distributed nodes (robots), each of which has limited sensing, intelligence and communication capabilities. An ad-hoc wireless network is established among all nodes, and each node considers other nodes as extended sensors. By gathering other nodes' locations and measurement data, each node's FLC can independently determine its next optimal deployment location. Simultaneously, by applying the three properties of the swarm behavior: separation, cohesion and alignment, the approach can ensure the sensor network attains wide regional coverage and dynamically stable connectivity. The simulation presented in this paper shows the swarm-based FLC mobile sensor network can achieve better performance and have higher fault tolerance in the event of partial node failures and sensor measurement errors.