Remote sensing and analysis using autonomous mobile robot with onboard micro-spectrometer

There has been an increasing interest in remote sensing and analysis of the environment. The applications include disaster monitoring, exploration, and natural resource protection. However, the human operation is labor intensive, time consuming and hazardous. The sensors fixed on-site in the environment suffer from limited sensing coverage and still requires human's on-site installation and maintenance. This paper proposed a novel system for the remote sensing and analysis of the environment using a mobile robot with on-board micro-spectrometer. A tracked locomotion is designed to adapt to tough terrains. The FLC (fuzzy logic control) navigate the mobile robot traversing trough the environment and collects the samples. The onboard micro-spectrometer system senses the samples and pattern of the solution spectrum is recognized through the ANN (artificial neural network). The results show the system can effectively and efficiently sample and classify several nominal solutions. The robot successfully transmits the spectrum and analysis to the remote control station through the proposed distributed architecture. The proof-of-concept demonstrates an unmanned operated chemical lab in motion for the remote sensing and analysis of the environment by integrating the micro-spectrometer with the autonomous mobile robot.