Remote Biological and Robotic Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring

Abstract Environment monitoring of large areas requires for many in-situ pollutant measurements. An efficient approach which integrates biological and robotic systems is presented in this contribution. In this approach bees provide an early detection capacity which is complemented by mobile robots to verify pollution indications by obtaining more detailed in-situ measurements. This contribution reports on the system architecture and the challenging technical components related to detecting the sampling location of the bees by observing their dancing behavior, the autonomous transfer of the rovers to these target positions for detailed measurements, the integration of the obtained data from the different sources into an overall characterization of the area's pollution status and an autonomous flexible alerting system.