Perimeter Detection and Surveillance of Polluted Areas by Robotized Agents in a Hybrid Wireless Sensor Network

Perimeter detection and surveillance by autonomous agents in the form of autonomous robots has become one of the most used solutions concerning both environmental and human safety problems. Being part of distributed control systems, such robots support conventional pollution prevention systems. On the other hand, in the last decade wireless sensor networks (WSN) have provoked the interest of specialists from different areas by imposing a large number of theoretical and practical challenges related to their implementation. This paper presents a possible way for inclusion of mobile robots into a hybrid WSN structure, that can be suitable for solving pollution area detection and surveillance issues. The goal is to transform the WSN network into an adaptive sensor system with intelligent behavior which can be used to discover and track the perimeter of spots or areas where given monitored environmental parameters violate defined thresholds. A robotized agent can provide flexibility with respect to the installation of the network sensors and allow reliable information gathering and transfer. The proposed algorithmic method has been tested on a pre-built laboratory prototype of a hybrid WSN. The robotized agents (mobile nodes) in its structure have been built using nonholonomic autonomous wheeled mobile robots iRobot Create equipped additionally with a single-chip computer Gumstix Verdex pro TM XL6P with various expansion modules.