Experimental Analysis of the Influence of Olfactory Property on Chemical Plume Tracing Performance

In this letter, we investigated the relationship between the performance of chemical plume tracing (CPT) and odor sensing property. Tracking of chemical plumes plays an important role because it facilitates the identification of an odor source. Conventional research has focused on the development of CPT algorithms, whereas the influence of the performance odor sensors on CPT performance has not been investigated. Therefore, in this letter, we first compared the olfactory characteristics of an insect (silkworm moth, Bombyx mori), which has high CPT performance and the characteristics of an artificial odor sensor. In particular, we focused on and compared the recovery times of the two types of sensors, which plays an important role in the acquisition of odor information. As a result, it was determined that the recovery time for the insect olfactory sensor was ten times faster than that of the artificial odor sensor. We also experimentally evaluated the effect of this difference in the recovery time on CPT performance. CPT experiments using silkworm moths and a robot revealed that there was a correlation between the CPT performance and sensor recovery time. As such, it was demonstrated that it is necessary to improve not only the algorithm but also the sensor recovery time to improve the CPT performance.