Odor Source Localization in Obstacle Regions Using Switching Planning Algorithms with a Switching Framework

Odor source localization (OSL) robots are essential for safety and rescue teams to overcome the problem of human exposure to hazardous chemical plumes. However, owing to the complicated geometry of environments, it is almost impossible to construct the dispersion model of the odor plume in practical situations to be used for probabilistic odor source search algorithms. Additionally, as time is crucial in OSL tasks, dynamically modifying the robot’s balance of emphasis between exploration and exploitation is desired. In this study, we addressed both the aforementioned problems by simplifying the environment with an obstacle region into multiple sub-environments with different resolutions. Subsequently, a framework was introduced to switch between the Infotaxis and Dijkstra algorithms to navigate the agent and enable it to reach the source swiftly. One algorithm was used to guide the agent in searching for clues about the source location, whereas the other facilitated the active movement of the agent between sub-environments. The proposed algorithm exhibited improvements in terms of success rate and search time. Furthermore, the implementation of the proposed framework on an autonomous mobile robot verified its effectiveness. Improvements were observed in our experiments with a robot when the success rate increased 3.5 times and the average moving steps of the robot were reduced by nearly 35%.