CENS Technical Seminar Series

Odor Source Localization with Mobile Robots

Invited Speaker: Thomas Lochmatter
Date: October 10, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Venue: BH 4760

Abstract

With the advances in robotics and chemicals sensor research in the last decade, odor sniffing robots have become an active research area. Notably the localization of odor sources would allow for very interesting robotic applications, such as search and rescue operations, safety and control operations on airports or industrial plants, and humanitarian demining. Many of these applications are time-critical, i.e. odor sources should be found as fast as possible. However, as the structure of plumes in the air is intermittent in both time and space, tracking airborne plumes is a challenging problem.

We are studying algorithms for odor source localization. In recent work, we have compared three bio-inspired algorithms based on casting, upwind surge and spiral motion. The algorithms were evaluated both in simulation and with real robots in a wind tunnel under laminar flow. For the latter, we equipped a Khepera III robot with an ethanol sensor and a wind direction sensor. The talk will introduce the experimental setup with the robot and the wind tunnel, and show results of our recent work. At the end, a short outlook onto current and future research efforts with odor source localization algorithms will be given.

Biography

After receiving a Master in "Digital Communication Systems and Technology" from Chalmers University of Technology (CTH, Sweden) in 2005 and a Master in "Communication System" from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in 2006, Thomas Lochmatter joined the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory at EPFL. He is currently carrying out a PhD thesis entitled "Distributed Odor Source Localization with a Team of Miniature Mobile Robots" under the supervision of Prof. Alcherio Martinoli, and expected to finish in 2009.

Thomas is co-founder of three companies in the field of educational software and IT services, and was involved in a number of projects in these areas.