A model for using self-organized agents to visually map environmental profiles

In this work, we investigate the possibility of using inspiration from the self-organizing property of organisms in nature for providing visual representation of an invisible pollutant profile. We present a novel mathematical model of the bacterium and use it to find pollutants in the environment. This model has the capability of exploring the environment to search for sparsely distributed pollutants or food sources and then subsequently exploiting them upon discovery. We also combine the bacterium model in a bacterium–flock algorithm for the purposes of preventing collisions between robots or organisms in addition to providing coverage to a pollutant. By adjusting the velocity of individuals, we show that we are able to control the coverage provided by the population as a whole. Furthermore, we compare the bacterium–flock algorithm with a novel gradient-ascent-flocking algorithm and the well established Voronoi partition algorithm. Results show that bacterium–flock algorithm and the Voronoi partition algorithm are capable of adapting the distribution of the individuals of a population based upon the underlying pollutant profile while the gradient-ascent-flocking algorithm is not. This shows that the bacterium–flock and the Voronoi partition algorithms can potentially be used to track a spatiotemporal function. On the other hand, the gradient-ascent-flock algorithm has a faster convergence time in some cases with the Voronoi partition algorithm having the slowest convergence time overall. Crown Copyright 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.