Jun 20, 2018 |
Robot bloodhound tracks odors on the ground
|
(Nanowerk News) Bloodhounds are famous for their ability to track scents over great distances. Now researchers have developed a modern-day bloodhound - a robot that can rapidly detect odors from sources on the ground, such as footprints.
|
The robot, reported in ACS Sensors ("A Robot Equipped with a High-Speed LSPR Gas Sensor Module for Collecting Spatial Odor Information from On-Ground Invisible Odor Sources"), could even read a message written on the ground using odors as a barcode.
|
|
A robot equipped with a high-speed gas sensor module based on localized surface plasmon resonance. (© ACS)
|
Over the past two decades, researchers have tried to develop robots that rival the olfactory system of bloodhounds.
|
However, most robots can only detect airborne odors, or they are painstakingly slow at performing analyses. Zhongyuan Yang, Fumihiro Sassa and Kenshi Haysashi wanted to develop a robot with a high-speed gas sensor that could rapidly track invisible odor sources on the ground.
|
The researchers based their odor sensor on a technique called localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) that measured changes in light absorption by gold nanoparticles upon exposure to a gas. As the robot traveled across a surface, a tube placed close to the ground suctioned odors into the LSPR sensor.
|
The researchers showed that the sensor could accurately detect the location of ethanol odor sources placed at different positions along the robot's path, at a travel speed of 10 centimeters/second (about 4 inches/second).
|
In addition, the robot could read the word "ODOR" in binary barcode deposited on the ground as a series of ethanol marks at different positions. The robot has great potential in a multi-robot communication system or as a security robot working in an office, the researchers say.
|