Application Of Simulated Annealing Algorithm To Robot Active Olfaction

The research work about active olfaction is a new subject which integrates the knowledge of multiple disciplines such as robotic technology, intelligence technology, sensor technology and so on. There are lots of potential applications for the active olfaction, for example, dangerous environment exploration, disaster rescue as well as looking for the leakage sources of toxic and harmful gases. In this thesis, the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is applied in the active olfaction research by using a single robot. Meanwhile, considering the many different kinds of gases existing in the real airflow environments, a new electronic nose which can detect five different kinds of gases is designed.This thesis focuses on the active olfaction research by using a single robot in outdoor airflow environments. The main research work can be concluded as follow.1. The state of the art of active olfaction is summarized, and the difficulties of the active olfaction are analyzed.2. The electronic nose which can identify five different gases is designed. The hardware of sensors’array is built. The software which can display the real-time concentration information of each gas is programmed.3. A new SA algorithm based plume tracing strategy suing a single robot is put forward. The improved search methods are also proposed.4. The results of active olfaction based on the SA algorithm in a large-scale advection-diffusion simulation environment is given and analyzed, and the results validate the feasibility of the proposed active olfaction method.5. The realization problem of the active olfaction is summarized and the future research perspective is analyzed in the end.