Braitenberg's vehicle-like odor plume tracking robot

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a turnability of the Braitenberg's vehicle-type odor tracking robot with the sensors of different characteristics and different connections between sensors and actuators. We have proposed the odor plume tracking robot based on the simple structure, called Braitenberg's vehicle, and the robot has two gas sensors on left and right sides of the top of the robot, which drive two DC motor actuators directly. The gas sensors output are converted to the input velocity to motors, and then the moving direction, that is, the behavior of the robot depends on the connection of the sensors and actuators. We prepare two commercially available sensors with different recovery response property under two types of sensor-actuator connections, which are cross- and inhibition-like connections. Then we show that the turnability of the robot using a gas sensor in odor plume tracking can be improved and capture the odor source by modifying the connection structure between sensors and actuators.