Moth-inspired chemical plume tracing on an autonomous underwater vehicle

Li, Wei; Farrell, Jay A.; Pang, Shuo; Arrieta, Richard

doi:10.1109/tro.2006.870627

Cited by 230 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…If water is sucked through a pipe using a pump as in our previous work [13], the inlet opening of the pipe can be regarded as a point sink [10]. In this case, a spherically symmetric flow field is generated, as shown in Figure 2(b).…”

Section: Crayfish Robotmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Two underwater robots with chemical plume tracking capabilities have been reported so far in the literature. Both of them are based on the rheotactic strategies, assuming the existence of sufficiently strong water flow and chemical plumes with well-defined shapes [11,12]. In contrast, here we report a crayfish robot designed to search for chemical sources under stagnant flow conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The robot is not only equipped with an array of chemical sensors, but also with a flow generator to enhance chemical reception by drawing surrounding water samples to the sensors. In our previous work, the underwater robotic system with a suction pump was developed [13]. The newly developed autonomous mobile robot described in this paper is equipped with a pair of arms mimicking the maxillipeds of a crayfish.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crayfish Robot That Generates Flow Field to Enhance Chemical Reception

Ohashi¹,

Kagawa²,

Nakatsuka³

et al. 2012

JST

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This paper describes a wheeled underwater robot developed for locating chemical sources autonomously under stagnant flow conditions. In still water, the released chemical stays in the immediate vicinity of the source location. The search for chemical sources under such conditions is extremely laborious since the presence of a chemical source cannot be detected from a distant place. The chemical sensors on the robot show no response unless a chemical substance released from the source arrives at the sensors. Crayfish in search of food are known to actively generate water currents by waving their small appendages with a fan-like shape. It is considered that the generated water currents help their olfactory search. The smell of food is carried to their olfactory organs from the surroundings by the generated flow, and then is perceived. The robot presented in this paper employs arms mimicking the maxillipeds of a crayfish to generate water currents and to draw chemicals to its sensors. By waving the arms vertically, a three-dimensional flow field is generated and water samples are drawn from a wide angular range. The direction of a chemical source can be determined by comparing the responses of four laterally aligned electrochemical sensors. Experimental results show that the flow field generated by the maxilliped arms is more effective in collecting chemical samples onto the sensors than that generated by a pump. The robot equipped with the maxilliped arms can detect the presence of a chemical source even if the source is placed off the trajectory of the robot.

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Section: Crayfish Robotmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Crayfish Robot That Generates Flow Field to Enhance Chemical Reception

Ohashi¹,

Kagawa²,

Nakatsuka³

et al. 2012

JST

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“…A class of most extensively studied biomimetic CPT methods are the ones imitating the pheromone plume tracing behavior of male moths to search for females [8]. Li et al developed, optimized, and evaluated [9] a moth-inspired cross-plume counterturning strategy, and proposed [10] a behavior-based adaptive mission planner (AMP). Four behaviors were implemented in this AMP: Plume finding, plume tracing, plume reacquiring, and chemical source declaration, in which the second and third behaviors are moth-inspired.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, the AMP proposed in [10] has successfully accomplished the CPT mission over one hundred meters in near-shore ocean environments. Specifically, in the AMP proposed in [10], plume finding behavior is activated at the initial stage of CPT to find the first chemical clue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Rapidly Re-Contact the Lost Plume in Chemical Plume Tracing

Cao

Meng

Wang

et al. 2015

Sensors

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Maintaining contact between the robot and plume is significant in chemical plume tracing (CPT). In the time immediately following the loss of chemical detection during the process of CPT, Track-Out activities bias the robot heading relative to the upwind direction, expecting to rapidly re-contact the plume. To determine the bias angle used in the Track-Out activity, we propose an online instance-based reinforcement learning method, namely virtual trail following (VTF). In VTF, action-value is generalized from recently stored instances of successful Track-Out activities. We also propose a collaborative VTF (cVTF) method, in which multiple robots store their own instances, and learn from the stored instances, in the same database. The proposed VTF and cVTF methods are compared with biased upwind surge (BUS) method, in which all Track-Out activities utilize an offline optimized universal bias angle, in an indoor environment with three different airflow fields. With respect to our experimental conditions, VTF and cVTF show stronger adaptability to different airflow environments than BUS, and furthermore, cVTF yields higher success rates and time-efficiencies than VTF.

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