A survey of biologically inspired chemical plume tracking strategies for single robot in 2-D turbulence dominated flow environments

Abstract

A survey of biologically inspired chemical plume tracking strategies for single robot is presented. We focus on the 2-D turbulence dominated airflow environments. Olfactory-based mechanisms have been hypothesized for biological behaviors including foraging, mate-seeking, homing, and host-seeking. Server robots with such chemical plume tracking feats would have applicability in many dangerous or toxic searching tasks. In this paper, we classify the biologically inspired chemical plume tracking strategies for single robot in 2-D turbulence dominated flow environments into four types, namely chemotaxis-based, anemotaxis-based, infotaxis-based, and vision fusion-based. The advantages and disadvantages of the typical algorithms in each strategy are reviewed in detail. In final, further research directions in this area are presented.