Environmental Monitoring Robotic System

Robots are being developed and utilized as a fundamental data collection tool for environmental monitoring to meet the standards established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Monitoring of factors such as temperature, humidity, CO levels and etc. is a major concern to businesses, educational institutions, and health organizations because it can significantly impact the health, comfort, well-being and productivity of the individuals. Sensor data collected can provide the necessary Indoor Air Quality information to the designers and the maintenance crew to take the corrective measures to meet the standards of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Furthermore, the environmental monitoring robot with automated machines and sensors can take place of humans to collect data in dangerous environments. To address the issues of environmental factors and to meet the requirement of Senior/Capstone design project course, students worked in a team to design, fabricate and test a mobile Robotic System to monitor and map data from the environmental sensors in a well-defined trajectory in an academic building. The Environmental Monitoring Robotic System consists of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) supported by the encoders on the Robot base to determine the location of the Robot and a Kinect@ Microsoft Inc. camera to detect objects and obstacles in the trajectory. The proposed systems also consist of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and sensor section for monitoring the environment. The ROS section is used for mapping and localization of the mobile robot. The navigation stack in ROS is used for autonomous operation of the robot to move through a predetermined path to map data from the environmental sensors. The sensor section includes the humidity sensor, temperature sensor and a sensor for detecting the presence of different gases like CO, methane, propane and LPG. This paper discusses the design, fabrication, programming and implementation of a robotic platform to monitor the environmental changes. This paper also introduces an approach which enables students to work in teams to develop hardware/software system.