A robotic system to locate hazardous chemical leaks

Tracing leaks of airborne radioactive, poisonous or flammable materials is a potentially dangerous activity that could be undertaken by robotic systems. This paper describes a practical investigation of the possibility of developing simple, low cost, autonomous robots to perform this task. It is envisaged that these robots would be used in large numbers. This would improve reliability through redundancy and provide large area coverage from a wide distribution of robots. Failure of a single unit would not jeopardise the overall sensing operation. Sensing and control techniques developed to perform leak location in a simplified laboratory environment are described and experimental results are presented.