Object recognition: A new application for smelling robots

Olfaction is a challenging new sensing modality for intelligent systems. With the emergence of electronic noses, it is now possible to detect and recognize a range of different odours for a variety of applications. In this work, we introduce a new application where electronic olfaction is used in cooperation with other types of sensors on a mobile robot in order to acquire the odour property of objects. We examine the problem of deciding when, how and where the electronic nose (e-nose) should be activated by planning for active perception and we consider the problem of integrating the information provided by the e-nose with both prior information and information from other sensors (e.g., vision). Experiments performed on a mobile robot equipped with an e-nose are presented.