Naive physics for effective odour localisation

This paper describes current progress of a project that uses naive physics to enable a robot to perform efficient odour localisation. Odour localisation is the problem of finding the source of an odour or other volatile chemical. Performing this effectively could lead to many humanitarian and other valuable applications. Current techniques utilise reactive control schemes requiring the robot to follow the plume along its entire length, which is slow and may be especially difficult in a cluttered environment. This research is concerned with creating a more ‘intelligent’ system to overcome these limitations. A map of the robot’s environment was used, together with a naive physics model of airflow to predict the pattern of air movement. The robot used the airflow pattern to reason about the probable location of the odour source. A prototype system was successful in a simplified cluttered environment, locating the source comparatively quickly. This demonstrates that naive physics can be used for effective odour localisation, and has the potential to allow a robots operating in unstructured environments to reason about their surroundings. This paper presents details of the naive physical model of airflow, reasoning system, experimental work, and results of practical odour source localisation experiments.