Robot bloodhound tracks odors on the ground

[Still Waters]

Bloodhounds are famous for their ability to track scents over great distances. Now researchers have developed a modern-day bloodhound—a robot that can rapidly detect odors from sources on the ground, such as footprints. The robot, reported in ACS Sensors, could even read a message written on the ground using odors as a barcode.

Over the past two decades, researchers have tried to develop robots that rival the olfactory system of bloodhounds. However, most robots can only detect airborne odors, or they are painstakingly slow at performing analyses. Zhongyuan Yang, Fumihiro Sassa and Kenshi Haysashi wanted to develop a robot with a high-speed gas sensor that could rapidly track invisible odor sources on the ground.

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-robot-bloodhound-tracks-odors-ground.html