Goal-oriented mobile robot navigation using an odour sensor

Mobile robot navigation seen as trail following is the most industrial exploited implementation of autonomous vehicles. Normally, expensive magnetic trail are used. In this paper a cheaper odour trail is proposed. In fact, a vehicle equipped with two odour sensors is able to follow a felt ribbon soaked with odour marker. The advantage of use of this technology is the cheapness. Experimental results on the authors' test vehicle SAURO are shown.