Ant Robotic Swarm for Visualizing Invisible Hazardous Substances

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