Towards a Multi-peclet Number Pollution Monitoring Algorithm John Oyekan, Dongbing Gu, and Huosheng Hu University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom {jooyek,dgu,hhu}@essex.ac.uk http://www.essex.ac.uk/csee/ Abstract. Environments can range from low peclet numbers in which diffusion is predominant to high peclet numbers in which turbulence and advection occur. Control algorithms deployed on robotic platforms to monitor spatiotemporal dis- tributions are often very specific to a particular peclet number environment and suffer reduction in efficiency when used in another peclet number environment. This paper investigates this issue and proposes the development of a pollution monitoring controller that can be used in various environments possessing dif- ferent peclet numbers. A diffusion based controller and a controller that uses velocity flow information present in the environment are used as candidates for investigation. Even though the diffusion based controller lacks the ability to find a pollution source in a high turbulent environment, it still possess a desirable char- acteristic that could be used to map a pollution plume in a seaport environment. Keywords: Bio Inspired Controllers, Pollution Plume Characterization, Envi- ronmental Monitoring. 1 Introduction Monitoring pollution levels in the natural environment as become a major priority for governments around the world due to the issue of global warming. This is especially true as rises in sea levels have been recorded in low level areas around the world. Global warming has also resulted in an increase in specie invasion of habitats not native to them because of rises in sea temperature and the extinction of wild life[1]. As a result of this, researchers in the mobile sensor field have been developing various techniques to monitor the environment. This includes developing algorithms that would enable a swarm of agents form the spatial distribution of a pollutant as in [2][3]. Also, algorithms have been developed that enable a single agent find a pollution source as in [4][5][6][7]. In the natural marine environment flow conditions can vary from one area to another depending on the topology of the environment and speed of flow of the water. These conditions can vary from very low peclet number in which diffusion is predominant (e.g reservoirs or man made lakes) to very high peclet numbers in which naturally oc- curring chemicals such as pheromone experience a combination of diffusion, advection and turbulent mixing with the water medium (e.g a river at high tide). In such turbu- lent environments, chemicals often undergo turbulent “tearing” from the main chemical S. Jeschke, H. Liu, and D. Schilberg (Eds.): ICIRA 2011, Part II, LNAI 7102, pp. 287–296, 2011. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011