Efficient Measurement Planning for Remote Gas Sensing with Mobile Robots

The problem of gas detection is relevant to manyreal-world applications, such as leak detection in industrialsettings and surveillance. In this paper we address the problemof gas detection in large areas with a mobile robotic platformequipped with a remote gas sensor. We propose a novelmethod based on convex relaxation for quickly finding anexploration plan that guarantees a complete coverage of theenvironment. Our method proves to be highly efficient in termsof computational requirements and to provide nearly-optimalsolutions. We validate our approach both in simulation andin real environments, thus demonstrating its applicability toreal-world problems.