Rapid localization of radioactive leaks based on hybrid adaptive grey wolf algorithm

Abstract

Abstract Radioactive source localization algorithms have been widely used in the detection of nuclear accident areas. But some shortcomings, such as complex algorithm structure, slow localization speed and poor accuracy, were obviously performed to affect mobile robot locating autonomously. In this paper, a potential alternative method was investigated to be a new usage of locating leaks, just via specifying the change of exposure rate. In this model, several key factors, such as gamma ray attenuation, scattering factor, travel angle guide, spatial discretization, etc., were taken into consideration, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm, which is appropriated in unknown areas of the radioactive waste repository. Since there are three factors with different contribution, such as position, quantity of the source and gamma ray energy, which considered to demonstrate its impact on success. So, a hybrid adaptive grey wolf algorithm (HAGWO) has been adopted and implemented to develop a novel rapid method of radioactive leak location. Three aspects, including the good point set initialization in population size, balanced convergence function, and self-adaptive greedy strategy for population update, were optimized and merged into the locating model. To investigate the effectiveness of the algorithm, results of HAGWO are compared with grey wolf algorithm (GWO), good point set initialization strategy GWO(GGWO) and adaptive head wolf strategy GWO (ALGWO) in convergence speed, accuracy, stability and positioning error of single and double leak points. It is observed that convergence speed is increased by 37.93 ± 2% at the highest; the convergence accuracy is increased by 92.42 ± 2% at the most; the stability is improved by 30% ∼ 50%. The positioning error of single leak point is within 1.08%, and the positioning error of double leak point is less than 8.90%. Besides, compared with GWO, GGWO and ALGWO, the single-point accuracy is improved by 1.36 percentage points (to GWO), and the double-point accuracy is improved by 40.35 percentage points (to ALGWO) at most. It is observed that HAGWO performs the best in locating leaks, with a faster convergence, stronger stability and more accuracy.