EESS talk - Student presentation on "Robotic gas sensing: challenges and opportunities"

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Event details

Date 05.03.2024
Hour 12:4513:15
Speaker Chira Ercolani, DISAL
Location Online
Category Conferences - Seminars
Event Language English
Abstract:
Harmful  chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants  and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution  of the atmosphere and poses a considerable threat to both human and  animal lives. Scientific advances in the fields of robotics, embedded  systems and chemical sensing allow robotic assets equipped with gas sensors to be employed in gas sensing missions. In  particular, the employment of drones offers a promising research  direction because their versatility of movement can capture the  tridimensional nature of the gas dispersion phenomenon.
During  this talk, I will discuss ways in which small aerial vehicles can be  employed in gas sensing missions. After describing our bespoke gas sensing setup, I will draw  the attention to an important tradeoff between exploration of the  environment and exploitation of sensed gas cues, and I will explain how  adaptive sampling techniques try to maximize the outcome of a gas sensing mission. Finally, I will comment on the  application of multi-robot systems to the field of gas sensing with the  aim of speeding up urgent missions.

Short Biography:
Chiara Ercolani is a Ph.D. student at the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory at EPFL working on 3D gas source localization and distribution mapping. She received her M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Digital Electronics and Computer Engineering in 2018 from EPFL, and she carried out her Master Thesis at the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center. She received her B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering in 2015 from Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests include environmental monitoring, path planning, embedded systems, multi-robot systems and machine learning. 
 

Practical information

  • General public
  • Free
  • This event is internal

Organizer

  • EESS - IIE

Contact

  • Dr. Stéphane Joost, LGB

Tags

Gas sensing environmental monitoring environmental mapping aerial vehicles multi robot systems

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