Bloodhounds are renowned for their ability to follow an old scent trail over large distances. Transitioning this skill into the world of machines, researchers from Japan’s Kyushu University have created a robotic bloodhound that can identify ground odors, such as footprints.
Along with odor detection, the robot can also read ground-level messages using scent as a barcode.
Past designs paled in comparison to the bloodhound’s olfactory system. Many robots failed at low scent detection, and could only notice airborne odors. In addition, the performance speed of data analysis was incredibly slow.
These challenges inspired Zhongyuan Yang, Fumihiro Sassa, and Kenshi Haysashi to develop a robot equipped with a high-speed gas sensor that could detect and analyze odor sources on the ground.
A technique known as localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) served as the basis for the sensor design. LSPR uses gold nanoparticles to measure light absorption changes once it’s exposed to gas. So, as the robot moves about its day, a tube suctions up different smells and sends them directly to the LSPR sensor.
Studies have shown that ethanol sources were identified at varying locations as the robot traveled at 10 centimeters/second. The word “ODOR” was also successfully detected as well, seen as a binary barcode of ethanol marks.
“This work may help in the development of environmental sensing robots, such as the development of odor source mapping and multi-robot systems with pheromone tracing,” according to the research abstract.
Read, “A Robot Equipped with a High-Speed LSPR Gas Sensor Module for Collecting Spatial Odor Information from On-Ground Invisible Odor Sources,” published in American Chemical Society (ACS) Sensors to learn more.