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There has been a high demand for fire prevention in large warehouses and workshops for many years. It is important to localise inconspicuous potential fire, which is called smouldering timely and precisely in order to prevent significant damage. Different from a flaming fire source, smouldering source emits less smoke and sustains little heat so it can be challenging for smoke detectors and heat detectors to detect. Recent research show that unmanned robots that are equipped with plume-tracing algorithms are capable of sensing chemical emission and localise its source. Under the condition that gas and smoke may also form plume, it is promising to apply plume-tracing robots in the localisation of smouldering source. In this paper, a novel approach to localise early stage fire using plume-tracing robot is presented. The robot is tested in a CFD-created virtual warehouse environment and proved to be capable of detecting and localising the smouldering source in a warehouse environment successfully.