Gas Distribution Mapping

Gas distribution modeling (GDM), also referred to as gas distribution modeling, is the process of deriving a truthful representation of how gases are dispersed in an environment from a set of spatially and temporally distributed measurements of relevant variables, like the gas concentration or the wind vector.

GDM constitutes an ideal application area for mobile robotics since they can provide an adaptive resolution of the distribution model while still offering the required accurate localization of each measurement. Installing sensors on mobile robots allows the creation of gas distribution models on the fly, thus the possibility of making decisions upon such a model, as for example, what locations to explore next.

An example of a GDM generated by a mobile robot equipped with an electronic nose (e-nose). (left) Ground-truth gas concentration profile with details of the robot path and measurement locations as red points. (right) Estimated gas distribution from the sensor measurements.

Building GDM with a mobile robot is a challenging task, mainly because in many realistic scenarios gas is dispersed by turbulent advection, which creates packets of gas that follow chaotic trajectories. This means that the gas distribution is, in general, not static but is continuously changing instead. Despite these problems, GDM has important applications in industry, science, and every-day life. Mobile robots equipped with gas sensors are deployed, for example, for pollution monitoring in public areas, surveillance of industrial facilities producing harmful gases, or for the inspection of contaminated areas within rescue missions.

Some Results

Related Publications:

Journals (7)

2026

J. Monroy, P. Ojeda, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

A Physics-Informed Gaussian Markov Random Field Framework for Indoor Airflow Field Estimation

Building and Environment, vol. 303, pp. 114957, 2026. Q1 · T1

2023

A. Gongora, J. Monroy, F. Rahbar, C. Ercolani, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez, A. Martinoli

Information-Driven Gas Distribution Mapping for Autonomous Mobile Robots

MDPI Sensors. Special Issue Robotics for Environment Sensing, vol. 23, no. 12, 2023. Q2 · T2

P. Ojeda, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

VGR Dataset: A CFD-based Gas Dispersion Dataset for Mobile Robotic Olfaction

Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 2023. Q2 · T2

2021

P. Ojeda, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

A Simulation Framework for the Integration of Artificial Olfaction into Multi-Sensor Mobile Robots

MDPI Sensors, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 2041, 2021, ISSN: 1424-8220. Q2 · T1

2020

A. Gongora, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Joint Estimation of Gas & Wind Maps for Fast-Response Applications

Applied Mathematical Modelling, 2020, ISSN: 0307-904X. Q1 · T1

2019

J. Monroy, J.R. Ruiz-Sarmiento, F.A. Moreno, C. Galindo, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Olfaction, Vision, and Semantics for Mobile Robots. Results of the IRO Project

Sensors, vol. 19, no. 16: 3488, 2019. Q1 · T1

2016

J. Monroy, J.L. Blanco, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Time-Variant Gas Distribution Mapping with Obstacle Information

Autonomous Robots, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2016, ISSN: 1573-7527. Q2 · T2

Book Chapters (1)

2018

A. Gongora, D. Fernandez-Chaves, A. Jaenal, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Toward the Generation of Smell Maps: Matching Electro-Chemical Sensor Information with Human Odor Perception

Petkov, Nicolai; Strisciuglio, Nicola; Travieso-González, Carlos M. (Ed.): Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA), IOS Press, pp. 134–145, IOS Press, 2018.

Conferences (7)

2022

P. Ojeda, J.R. Ruiz-Sarmiento, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

GadenTools: A Toolkit for Testing and Simulating Robotic Olfaction Tasks With Jupyter Notebook Support

Fifth Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT2022), Zaragoza, Spain, 2022.

2019

J. Monroy, J.R. Ruiz-Sarmiento, F.A. Moreno, C. Galindo, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Improvement of the Sensory and Autonomous Capability of Robots Through Olfaction: the IRO Project

Spanish Robotics Conference, Alicante (Spain), 2019.

A. Gongora, A. Jaenal, D. Fernandez-Chaves, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Urban Monitoring of Unpleasant Odors with a Handheld Electronic Nose

ISOCS/IEEE International Symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Nose (ISOEN), Fukuoka (Japan), 2019.

2018

A. Gongora, D. Fernandez-Chaves, A. Jaenal, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Toward the Generation of Smell Maps: Matching Electro-Chemical Sensor Information with Human Odor Perception

International Conference on Applications of Intelligent Systems (APPIS), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), 2018.

2017

J. Monroy, M. Jaimez, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez

Online Estimation of 2D Wind Maps for Olfactory Robots

International Symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Nose (ISOEN), pp. 1–3, Montreal (Canada), 2017.

2014

J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez, C. Sánchez-Garrido

Monitoring Household Garbage Odors in Urban Areas Through Distribution Maps

IEEE Sensors, pp. 1364–1367, Valencia, Spain, 2014.

2013

J.L. Blanco, J. Monroy, J. Gonzalez-Jimenez, A. Lilienthal

A Kalman Filter Based Approach to Probabilistic Gas Distribution Mapping

Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 217–222, Coimbra, Portugal, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-4503-1656-9.

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