Multiagents and Pollutant Monitoring

The purpose of controlling pollutant emissions is important in environmental quality preservation. However, in order to control, a previous step including pollutant measurement and assessment should be performed. What this paper suggests is the application of a robotic multiagent system to evaluate pollutant levels in the neighbourhood of one or more pollutant sources. In generic terms, this is the problem of searching and sampling a set of variables within a large dimension environment. The implemented case study is the simulation of a cloud produced by a power-plant chimney monitored by a set of helicopter models equipped with sensor and processing devices. These robotic agents are controlled by a behavioural architecture and communicate through a simple signalling process. They have two kinds of behaviours: individual ones, which permit them to accomplish the mission on their own and group behaviours that increase the society performance by gathering and spreading agents around ..