A proposed robotic air quality monitoring system

This paper describes a system for environmental monitoring. The component development and test are presented especially for monitoring Ammonia (NH3) pollution. The mobile robot sensing system has self localization capability and carries an open-path spectrometer. The spectrometer is low-cost, compact, ruggedized, and is designed for a wide area survey with measurement distance from 20 m to 1 km. A new double Fourier transformation procedure is implemented to remove the effects of 1/f noise and improve measurement sensitivity. Finally, an active beam alignment technology is proposed for automatic measurements that allow the mobile robot moves around the local terrain.