Monitoring household garbage odors in urban areas through distribution maps

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of the suitability of a mobile e-nose (carried on a bike) for the monitoring of unpleasant and potentially harmful odors in urban areas, likely coming from residential waste containers. The objective is to obtain a spatial and temporal representation of such odors by means of a gas distribution map, from which valuable information such as the location, or the time-intervals of maximum strength of the nuisance odors can be inferred. As a case of study, the results of a monitoring campaign carried out in a town in southern Spain are presented. The campaign comprises nine measurement runs distributed along three consecutive days, with a total path of more than 90Km. Upon the results, it is concluded the feasibility and potential of the approach, but also the need for a precise sensor characterization and for gas classification.

Olfaction, Vision, and Semantics for Mobile Robots. Results of the IRO Project

“…The task of odor recognition deals with the problem of identifying a volatile sample among a set of possible categories [23]. This process plays an important role in the development of many applications, such as city odor mapping [24,25], pollution monitoring [26], breath analysis in clinical environments [27], or the nowadays common estimation of blood alcohol content for drivers [28,29]. Among them, there are some applications such as pollution monitoring or leak detection that require measuring the environment continuously and/or at different locations.…”

An Electronic Architecture for Multipurpose Artificial Noses

“…The fan consumes 1 W, and the single-board computer consumes around 1.5 W. An alternative to the traditional sensor networks is to employ only one (or just a few) easy-to-transport e-nose. In this case, the mobile enose gathers the volatile chemical information while being transported by a robot [36,37], a vehicle [2,38], or a person [39], for example. Due to the mobility constraint, the e-nose must accomplish the following specifications: (i) be sensitive to gases of interest, (ii) provide georeferenced measurements, (iii) be compact and lightweight, and (iv) either feature a data logging system or offer connectivity to an external device (e.g., computer and smartphone).…”

“…An electronic nose (e-nose) is a device aimed at the artificial perception of airborne chemical substances, a task which finds broad use in industrial applications such as environmental pollution monitoring [1,2], gas source localization [3,4], food quality control [5,6], medical diagnosis [7,8], or safety-related tasks [9,10].…”

A configurable smart e-nose for spatio-temporal olfactory analysis

“…Among them, an important subset demands the reliable characterization of chemical substances over long periods of time and/or over large areas, constraining the use of classical instruments such as gas chromatographers or mass spectrometers in favor of more portable devices, being e-noses a practical and effective alternative [1], [2].…”