Semi - Autonomous Olfactive Environment Inspection by a Mobile Robot

Mobile robots can be of great value in the automated monitoring of chemical warehouses and industrial sites to prevent hazardous fluid leakages, thus increasing the safety level for human operators. This paper describes recent and current research at the University of Lecce aiming at developing a mobile platform with olfactory capability for hazardous site monitoring. An innovative smart transducer array of tin oxide chemical sensors, compliant with the standard interface IEEE 1451, is introduced and integrated on a differential drive mobile robot. A two stage strategy for environment inspection is proposed: first the vehicle is remotely controlled along a desired path (path learning phase), then the robot autonomously re-runs the path while recording in real time olfactory data of the environment. Experimental results relative to our laboratory environment are described