Toward Chemical-Trail Following Robots

This paper presents new advances in the area of chemical trail following with mobile robots. For that purpose, the properties of chemical volatiles and their evaporation rates were tested in order to discover an appropriate candidate to mark chemical trails and at the same time with ability to be detected by the robot olfactory system along the time. The capability of chemical detection was provide by a metal oxide-based olfactory system, mounted in a Khepera III mobile robot. An algorithm to search and track chemical trails is proposed. This algorithm was validated by simulations and by laboratory tests with a Khepera III mobile robot.