Verification of Intake Effect in Robot Exploration of Odor Source

Abstract

In this study, to improve performance of autonomous odor source search robot, we remarked artificial olfactory system which has smell intake function similar to animal s sniffing. The practical use of the robot is expected in various fields such as rescue and the poisonous gas counterterrorism. The olfactory system can exchange the intake speed, placement of gas sensors and shape of itself so that we can inspect a variety of intake strategies. To evaluate performance of intake strategies, we carried out odor source searching experiment by using the real robot in plural air flow environments. Under most environment, robot using air intake reached to odor source with higher probability than not using intake. On the other hand, higher intake speed does not achieved higher performance.