Multirobot searching method of natural gas leakage sources on offshore platform using ant colony optimization

Tao Ma,Shuhai Liu,Huaping Xiao

doi:10.1177/1729881420959012

Abstract

Natural gas leakage on offshore platforms has a great impact on safety production, and effective and reasonable leakage detection methods can prevent the harm caused by natural gas leakage. This article proposes a method based on ant colony optimization (ACO) for multirobots to collaboratively search for leaking natural gas sources on offshore platforms. First, analyze the structure and environment of the offshore platform, use Fluent software to simulate the diffusion process of natural gas leaked from the platform, and establish a diffusion model of natural gas leaked from various aspects, such as the layout of different platforms, the number of leaked gas sources, and the concentration of leaked gas sources. In terms of multirobot cooperative control, we analyzed and improved the ant colony algorithm and proposed a multirobot cooperative search strategy for gas search, gas tracking, and gas source positioning. The multirobot search process was simulated using MATLAB software, and the robot on the detection effect of multirobots was analyzed in many aspects, such as quantity, location of leak source, and a number of leak sources, which verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the multirobot control strategy based on optimized ACO. Finally, we analyze and compare the two control algorithms based on ACO and cuckoo search algorithm (CSA). The results show that the ACO-based multirobot air source positioning effect is significantly better than CSA.

Highlights

Offshore platform is an important equipment for offshore oil and gas extraction, the stability and safety of platform are very critical to ensure the normal exploitation of oil and gas.[1]
This article proposes a leaking gas search strategy based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and uses multiple robots to search for the source of natural gas leakage on the offshore platform
This method is based on the ant colony algorithm to achieve cooperative control of multiple robots

Summary

Introduction

Offshore platform is an important equipment for offshore oil and gas extraction, the stability and safety of platform are very critical to ensure the normal exploitation of oil and gas.[1]. This article adopts a multirobot active odor source localization method based on multirobot collaboration to search and locate the leaked natural gas on the offshore platform. Thomas et al.[16,17] used a partial differential equation to model the gas diffusion process, proposed a probabilistic method for identifying partial differential equations under sparseness, and used a factor graph, and a message-passing algorithm for multiple air source positioning and air source number identification of the robot are simulated, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified through experiments. This article proposes a leaking gas search strategy based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and uses multiple robots to search for the source of natural gas leakage on the offshore platform. The main steps include establishing a geometric model, setting boundary conditions, and selecting a calculation method.[27]

Establish a geometric model

Calculation model

Initial conditions and boundary conditions

Findings

Conclusion and prospects