ABSTRACT

Tracking scents and odor sources is a major challenge in robotics, with applications to the localization of chemical leaks, drugs, and explosives (Russell 1999). Nowadays, animals are commonly used in safety and security tasks because of their excellent smell detection capabilities. Examples include dogs and honeybees (Rains et al. 2008). However, using animals to sniff specific odors related to bombs or explosives has several drawbacks. On top of the hazards of such endeavors, animals like dogs show behavioral variations and changing moods. They get tired after extensive work and require frequent retraining as their performance decreases over time. As an alternative, could we envision using olfactory robots to advantageously replace animals for these tasks?