Locating Indoor Time-Variant Contaminant Sources Based on Nelder-Mead Algorithm Using Robot Active Olfaction Method

Abstract:

In this paper， the Nelder-Mead （NM） algorithm was combined with the robot active olfaction method to locate two types of time-variant contaminant sources， which are attenuated and periodic sources， respectively. First， the concentration fields of the contaminant sources were simulated through computational fluid dynamics （CFD） simulation. Then， the time-variant contaminant sources were located using the NM algorithm. The results show that the success rates of locating the two time-variant contaminant sources are both above 80 %. Three influencing factors such as the number of robots， robot response time， and the maximum number of robot search steps were discussed. The analysis indicates that in the case of 100 m² indoor space， time-variant sources can be best located when 5 robots are working on the site with a setting of 2 seconds in robot response and a maximum number of 50 robot search steps.

Key words:robot active olfaction;Nelder-Mead (NM)algorithm;time-variant contaminant source;computational fluid dynamics simulation