Bio-Inspired, Odor-Based Navigation

The ability of many insects, especially moths, to locate either food or a member of the opposite sex, by tracking a wind-borne plume of odor molecules, is an amazing reality. Numerous scenarios exist where having this capability embedded intoground-based or aerial vehicles would be invaluable. The main crux of this thesisinvestigation is the development of a navigation algorithm which gives a UAV theability to track a chemical plume to its source. Inspiration from the male moth's, in particular Manduca sexta (Tobacco Hornworm moth), ability to successfully tracka female's pheromone plume was used in the design of both 2-D and 3-D naviga-tion algorithms. The algorithms were developed to guide autonomous vehicles to asource generating an odor/chemical plume, using only the odor/chemical informationprovided by the plume.The algorithms were implemented using a variety of fuzzy controllers and adhoc engineering approaches. The fuzzy controller, critical to the success of bothalgorithms, was developed to estimate the location of a vehicle relative to the plume: coming into the plume, in the plume, exiting the plume, or out of the plume. Analysisof plume detections within a short-term memory bank provided the basis for thiscontroller.To test these algorithms, 2-D and 3-D simulation environments were developed.

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