First characterization results obtained in a wind tunnel designed for indoor gas source detection

Abstract

This paper presents the preliminary characterization results of a custom wind tunnel for designed for performing experiments on locating a volatile gas source with a mobile robot. Such experiments require a previous characterization of the wind tunnel as well as the definition of the configurable agents which are present during the experiments. This paper presents the experimental data gathered from the real environments. This paper shows the behavior of the evolution and diffusion of the gas depending on the gas injection rate, the mobile robot position, and the wind force. The mobile robot is equipped with a LIDAR for self localization, with a photo ionization detector (PID) for gas measurement, and with an anemometer for wind measurement. This paper shows the results obtained in static and dynamic experiments.