Identifying an odour source in fluid-advected environments, algorithms abstracted from moth-inspired plume tracing strategies

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Li, Wei^;

Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, California State University, Bakersfield, CA US | Robotics State Key Laboratory, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences Shenyang, Liaoning China

Note: [] Email: wli@csub.edu

Abstract: This paper presents algorithms for identifying the odour source of a chemical plume with significant filament intermittency and meander developed in fluid-advected environments. The algorithms are abstracted from moth-inspired chemical plume tracing strategies in two steps. First, we introduce the concept of the last chemical detection points that leads to construction of a source identification zone and development of two variations in the source identification algorithms. Second, we use Monte Carlo methods to optimise the proposed algorithms in a simulated environment. The evaluation results demonstrate that the optimised algorithm achieves a success rate of over 90% in identifying the source location, the average identification time is 3–4 min and the average error is 1–2 m surrounding the source location.

Keywords: biologically inspired searching strategy, chemical plume tracing, odour source localization, olfaction-based navigation

DOI: 10.1080/11762320903537790

Journal: Applied Bionics and Biomechanics, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 3-17, 2010