This thesis tackles the problem of robotic odour source localisation, that is, the use of robots to find the source of a chemical release. As the odour travels away from the source, in the form of a plume carried by the wind or current, small scale turbulence causes it to separate into intermittent patches, suppressing any gradients and making this a particularly challenging search problem.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been slowly moving into the mainstream as remote monitoring solutions – especially in hostile, hard-to-reach or otherwise complicated scenarios, where deployment of a traditional network may be unpractical.