Abstract
Polluted air causes enormous damage to human health. There is a high demand to find a solution for locating the places of illegal waste incineration due to the persistent smog problem. The use of multi-rotor drones for that purpose has now become one of the important research topics. The aim of the work was to check the possibility of using simple algorithms to search for the source of pollution. The algorithms that require low computing power, which may be part of the robot’s measurement and the control system’s internal software, were considered. The focus was on building a system based on a single robot that independently searches an area of a certain size. The simulation of the accuracy and scalability of the three different search algorithms was analysed for areas up to 200 m × 200 m. Two multi-rotor robots were prepared for the fieldwork. The validation of the two selected algorithms was carried out in outdoor environmental conditions. The fieldwork tests were carried out in areas with a maximum size of 100 m × 100 m. The obtained results were different, in particular on the wind speed and direction and the intensity of the pollution source. The random influence of these factors can verify the operation of the proposed system in practical applications. The difference between the true and the position of the source indicated by the robot was up to 15 m. That difference depended on the mutual arrangement of the measurement points and the pollution source location.
Highlights
Industrial civilisation and the development of cities have brought humanity enormous prosperity, and critical environmental problems
Due to the persistent problem, there is a high demand to look for a solution that will enable the location of places of illegal waste incineration
The scale of the pollution source must be adequate to the scale of the terrain
Summary
Industrial civilisation and the development of cities have brought humanity enormous prosperity, and critical environmental problems. Constant air pollution has become the hallmark of our time and an integral part of the lives of city dwellers around the world. Polluted air, which causes enormous damage to human health, on the example of Poland alone, is responsible for the premature death of tens of thousands of people annually, the prevalence of allergies, and other types of diseases [1]. Due to the persistent problem, there is a high demand to look for a solution that will enable the location of places of illegal waste incineration (pollution sources). The use of mobile robots (such as multi-rotor drones) to automatically search for a contamination source has become one of the significant research topics
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