International Journal of Information Acquisition Vol. 7, No. 3 (2010) 193–204 c  World Scientific Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S0219878910002154 BIO-INSPIRED COVERAGE OF INVISIBLE HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES IN THE ENVIRONMENT JOHN O. OYEKAN ∗ , HUOSHENG HU † and DONGBING GU ‡ School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO3 4SQ, United Kingdom ∗ jooyek@essex.ac.uk † hhu@essex.ac.uk ‡ dgu@essex.ac.uk Received 26 May 2010 Accepted 11 October 2010 Inspired by the simplicity of how nature solves its problems, a controller based upon the bacteria chemotaxis behavior and flocking of starlings in nature is developed and presented. It would enable the localization and subsequent mapping of pollutants in the environment. The pollutants could range from chemical leaks to invisible air borne haz- ardous materials. Simulation is used to explore the feasibility of the proposed controller and then a brief discussion on how to implement it onto a real robotic platform is pre- sented. By using the advantages offered by swarm robotics, it is possible to achieve a collective mapping of an invisible pollutant spread over a large area. The approach pre- sented is very simple, computational efficient, easily tuned and yet highly effective (desir- able characteristics of biological systems) in generating a representation of an invisible pollutant. Keywords : Bacterium inspired algorithm; environmental monitoring; f locking; invisible hazardous substances. 1. Introduction The technique used to provide sensor coverage of an area for safety or pollution monitoring is very important. A cost effective way might be to make the sensors dynamic so that they can move to locations where interesting data can be collected. Additionally, if the substance being monitored (hazardous pollutant, for example) is invisible, the sensors could be used to effectively form the distribution of the pollutant for peo- ple to see. Such information could be useful for evacuating humans from the path of pollutant or from the affected area. This is especially true for invisible substances such as nuclear radia- tion, sarin gas or nerve gas. To develop a technique to control the sen- sors for the needed coverage of an environ- ment, we face some technical challenges. The first challenge is how to quickly find the source of pollutant, and the second challenge is how to effectively control the agents so that colli- sion between them is avoided. Researchers have 193