Guiding drones by information gain

Alouette van Hove, Kristoffer Aalstad, Norbert Pirk

Keywords: deep reinforcement learning, Bayesian inference, source term estimation, infotaxis, information gain, mobile sensors, informative path planning

Abstract: The accurate estimation of locations and emission rates of gas sources is crucial across various domains, including environmental monitoring and greenhouse gas emission analysis. This study investigates two drone sampling strategies for inferring source term parameters of gas plumes from atmospheric measurements. Both strategies are guided by the goal of maximizing information gain attained from observations at sequential locations. Our research compares the myopic approach of infotaxis to a far-sighted navigation strategy trained through deep reinforcement learning. We demonstrate the superior performance of deep reinforcement learning over infotaxis in environments with non-isotropic gas plumes.

Submission Number: 7