Odor Localization using Gas Sensor for Mobile Robot
Nyayu Latifah Husni
Electrical Department
State Polytechnic of
Sriwijaya
Palembang, Indonesia
nyayu_latifah@polsri.ac.id
Ade Silvia Handayani
Electrical Department
State Polytechnic of
Sriwijaya
Palembang, Indonesia
ade_silvia@polsri.co.id
Siti Nurmaini
2
Robotic and Control Research
Lab, Faculty of Computer
Science, University of
Sriwijaya
siti_nurmaini@unsri.ac.id,
Irsyadi Yani
3
Mechanical Engineering
Department, Faculty of
Engineering,
University of Sriwijaya
yani_irs@yahoo.com
Abstract—This paper discusses the odor localization using
Fuzzy logic algorithm. The concentrations of the source that is
sensed by the gas sensors are used as the inputs of the fuzzy.
The output of the Fuzzy logic is used to determine the PWM
(Pulse Width Modulation) of driver motors of the robot. The
path that the robot should track depends on the PWM of the
right and left motors of the robot. When the concentration in
the right side of the robot is higher than the middle and the left
side, the fuzzy logic will give decision to the robot to move to
the right. In that condition, the left motor is in the high speed
condition and the right motor is in slow speed condition.
Therefore, the robot will move to the right. The experiment
was done in a conditioned room using a robot that is equipped
with 3 gas sensors. Although the robot is still needed some
improvements in accomplishing its task, the result shows that
fuzzy algorithms are effective enough in performing odor
localization task in mobile robot.
Keywords— odor localization; fuzzy logic; TGS.
I. INTRODUCTION
The development of odor localization research has grown
widely and rapidly. Most of the researches used static [1]
and dynamic instruments [2], [3], [4]. In static system, the
gas sensors were placed in determined spots. Some
drawbacks of them occurred, such as ineffectiveness of the
sensors due to the working areas of sensors that were limited
by the static range between the sensors and the sources. It is
contradictive with the dynamic system, i.e. the use of mobile
instruments where the gas sensors are integrated to mobile
robots or mobile devices. Being integrated to the mobile
robots makes the gas sensors be able to reach wider areas.
Although the range between the gas sensors and the sources
still influence the working areas of mobile sensors, the wide
areas can be achieved by mobile characteristics of the robots
where gas sensors placed.
The localization of odor sources were widely investigated
by researchers using simulation [5], [6], [7] or real
experiments [8], [9], [10]. The effectiveness of the robots in
localizing the sources depends on the methods used. Some
of the previous researchers used the algorithms as follows: 1.
imitated the behavior of the animals (chemotaxis and
anemotaxis) [11], [12], [13]; 2. based on the flow of the fluid
(fluxotaxis) [14], [15], [16]; 3. used entropy of the posterior
probability field (infotaxis) [17], etc. However, most of the
algorithms has drawbacks, such as low search accuracy and
efficiency due to their dependence on the wind direction
[18]. Jiandong [18] tried to find another way using fuzzy
logic to localize the odor. The path where the robot should
go was determined by the rate change of the plume sensed by
the 3 sensors mounted on it. Fuzzy logic was successful in
controlling the trajectory of the robot. Even though, the
validation of the fuzzy logic was done only in simulation. It
was far from the real one. In this research, a real robot was
developed and implemented in a real experiment. The robots
were equipped with some gas sensors that have a task to
supply the inputs data to the fuzzy logic algorithm.
Some other researchers also used fuzzy logic in their
experiments of odor localization [19], [20], [21], [22]. Most
of them used fuzzy to control the communication network.
X. Cui [19] implemented fuzzy logic in swarm robots of
mobile sensor networks. It is used to control nodes of the
sensor network in determining the next optimal node
deployment location. Siti Nurmaini in [20] proposed Fuzzy-
Kohonen Networks and Particle Swarm Optimization (FKN-
PSO) to localize the odor source. The result was then
compared to the Fuzzy-PSO. It showed that FKN-PSO was
more efficient than Fuzzy-PSO.
Other researches, such as in [21] and [22], show that the
fuzzy logic were used as sensor's information processor. P.
Jiang [21] used fuzzy logic to process multi inputs of the
sensors (olfaction, vision, wind speed/direction, distance and
position of robot). More detailed and accurate decisions of
these inputs were got easily using Fuzzy logic. The outputs
of the fuzzy were set up into six behaviors, including
obstacles avoidance, odor source declaration, nearest
distance-based visual searching, up-wind searching, path
planning, chemotaxis searching, and random searching. The
proposed algorithm was successful in increasing the ability
of the robots in finding the plume. Siti Nurmaini in [22] was
successful using fuzzy logic in finding the best target
position of each swarm robots. The fuzzy logic was only
activated when the gas sensors were inactive and robots
moved in unknown areas. When gas sensors were active, the
Fuzzy-PSO was used. Fuzzy-PSO was successful to control
the trajectory and movement of the robots.
In this research, the information of odor concentration
from gas sensors was used to determine the track of the
robots. The high concentration indicated that it was the way
of the source came from. Therefore, the fuzzy output will be
Proc. EECSI 2017, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 19-21 September 2017
978-1-5386-0549-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE . 584
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