Taste and search in a robotics context

There is increasing interest in developing robots that can sense and respond to plumes of volatile chemicals released into the atmosphere. However, chemicals with a molecular weight greater than 300 have very low volatility and do not produce detectable plumes. Such chemicals can be detected by taste and this paper describes a robot called TASTI that is equipped with a sensor for detecting chemical deposits on the ground. Search is an important and necessary ability for many biological organisms. Three biologically inspired search algorithms are being investigated as possible techniques that will allow TASTI to locate patches of chemical deposited on the ground using its chemical sensing tongue. This paper describes the algorithms and presents preliminary results of practical experiments.