Deploying large numbers of sensors has been receiving a lot of attention for detection of hazardous biological or chemical substances in public buildings, airports, shallow water harbors, etc. The sensor-carrying robots are in fact agents that facilitate the repositioning of network nodes in order to increase their coverage and accuracy. Wireless network communication is an essential technology in transmitting the sensed and telemetry information between robots, but it has traditionally been addressed separately from mobile robot navigation. In this work we propose to use a potential field framework to control the behavior of the mobile sensor nodes by combining classical robotic team concepts (obstacle avoidance, goal attainment, flight formation, environment mapping and coverage) with traditional sensor network concepts (node energy minimization, optimal data rate and congestion control, routing in ad-hoc networks). Simulation results are used to illustrate the proposed concepts, and an experimental mobile sensor fleet is built at the author's institution.

We propose to bring the instruments to the samples in the form of miniature wireless instrumented robots called the NanoWalkers. With the NanoWalker robot approach, instrumentations and throughput requirements can be adjusted extremely fast by simply adding, replacing, or removing robots at will. It is the aim of this project to develop a powerful and flexible environment that we believe may revolutionize the way drug, biological, material discovery, and characterization will be performed in the future.