Mobile robot olfaction – the use of robots for mobile
gas sensing – can provide more flexibility compared to
fixed sensor networks [5], and has been successfully used
in different tasks, such as mapping gas distributions [3]
and leak detection [6]. However, the problem of efficiently
generating plans for gas detection in large environments has
been overlooked. A common approach in current state of the
art is to program the robotic platforms to follow pre-defined
exploration paths or to reactively navigate in the area of
interest. Such exploration plans should be time- and energyefficient, taking into account both the sensing actions and
the distance traveled by the robot. This, intuitively speaking,
corresponds to solving a combination of a Watchman Route
Problem (that is, the problem of computing the shortest
route to guard a known area) and an Art Gallery Problem
(that is, selecting the minimum number of observation points
to completely observe a known area). Finding an optimal
solution to the combined problem is obviously a daunting
task. In [7], the authors use an approximation method to