Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs)-based mobile sensing for Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) monitoring: Current challenges and future directions

Abstract

The deployment of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) offers a promising solution for addressing spatial inefficiency and non-detection zone challenges of the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) monitoring area. Nevertheless, it is crucial to assess the current state of research development in this area, identify persistent challenges, and outline future directions. This review examines previous studies to identify current challenges and prospects. The data on four classified clusters (UGV structure and components, Monitoring and data capturing, Data analysis and validation, and Future directions) were extracted from 30 studies out of a total of 111 studies. The analysis results suggested that UGV navigation could benefit from the integration of 3D environmental models, its sensing reliability and performance can be further and better evaluated by including human behavior into research, developing practical approaches for mitigating sensor response time error and calculating optimal velocity for UGV during particulate matter capturing enable to enhance data acquisition stage. Furthermore, leveraging the strengths of this approach can advance research domains such as integration of this sensing method with Building Automation System (BAS), source apportionment, IEQ predictive models, IAQ simulation area, and air pollutants concentration spikes capturing and analysis. The findings of this study offer valuable insights to researchers interested in implementing UGV-based mobile sensing for effective IEQ monitoring and assessment.