Recognition and Discrimination of Ethanol and Methanol Odour with Applications for Robotic Swarm Control

This paper reports on work done towards the development of an odour sensing system that has the capability to distinguish between two different odours, namely ethanol and methanol. A recognition strategy has been developed that is capable of performing the aforementioned task. The odour sensor used is the commercially available gas sensor TGS2600 by Figaro. The computational requirements are provided by a M16C/62 Mitsubishi Microcontroller which can be interfaced to a PC for higher-level data collection. This work has potential applications for the field of swarm robotics. Multitudes of simple robots equipped with the ability to smell and recognise odours could potentially be controlled by plumes of recogniseable odour. With different odours conveying different messages, individual behaviour and hence collective behaviour could be modified.