Olfactory sensory system for odour plume sensing process by using quadrotor based flying sniffer robot

Most of the sniffer robots available today are housed on wheels and function at the 2D level while tracking prospective odour plumes. The wheeled sniffer robot cannot track odour plumes effectively as the odour plumes are released into a 3D space. Hence, a different type of robot locomotion is needed so that it is capable of tracking the odour plume effectively in ‘3D real-space’. Firstly, the focus of this paper is to determine and justify the selection of a prototype-flying mechanism for 3D odour plume. A quadrotor based flying sniffer robot is proposed under two important selection criteria; degree of locomotion maneuverability and airflow disturbances during flight. Both selection criteria are crucial, as the high degree of locomotion maneuverability can ensure that the odour plume tracking follows closely in all three dimensions, while the low airflow disturbances is designed to minimize the disturbance during the sniffing process. Secondly, the study of airflow simulation of quadrotor by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was carried out to identify the odour sensing region and determine sensor mounting position of quadrotor based flying sniffer robot in order to avoid the disturbance of airflow during sniffing process. Our experimental results demonstrate that by placing the correct mounting position of sensors we are able to complement and strengthen the sniffing ability of a quadrotor based flying robot in 3D space odour plume tracking.