Chemical Plume Tracing Jay A. Farrell, Professor Department of Electrical Engineering University of California, Riverside 92521 e: farrell@ee.ucr.edu v: 909-787-2159 f: 909-787-2425 url: www.ee.ucr.edu/~farrell

Autonomous Vehicle Based Chemical Plume Tracing Objectives: Develop strategies for an AUV to trace a chemical plume to its source. Methods: On-line deliberative planning On-line reactive planning On-line mapping Applications: Detection, localization, mapping of unexploded ordinance, thermal vents, etc

Moth Flight Tracks top view displacement in ‘y’ displacement in ‘x’ wind top view 100 200 400 600 -100 800 displacement in ‘y’ 200 -200 400 600 800 displacement in ‘x’ displacement in ‘z’ wind side view -200 200 -75 75 displac’t in ‘z’ displac’t in ‘y’ wind end view Moths, birds and other biological entities exhibit such cross-track oscillationsn Graphics from Carde and Justus at UCR

CPT Challenges Our goal is to track plumes to their source over near kilometer distances Chemical distribution is intermittent and meandering: gradient following is not possible The chemical distribution is likely to be constrained to very low altitudes Approach: Decomposition into Plume Search Components Plume finding Plume tracking Plume reacquisition Declaration of success: “odor source at (x,y)”

Autonomous Vehicle Architecture

Behavior Switching

AUV Plume Tracing Simulation

In-water Experimental Results 7 of 8 Successful Missions OpArea outlined in green Trajectory in red Chemical detections in blue

In-water Experimental Results

AUV Plume Tracing Experiments

Can we use Chemical Gradients? Movie by Todd Cowen, Cornell

Can Plume width predict range? Movie by Todd Cowen

Office of Naval Research Acknowledgement: Funded by the Office of Naval Research Open Issues and Future Research: algorithms to work robustly in the presence of multiple sources algorithms to map “source free” areas integration of additional behaviors incorporating data from other sensors

AUV Plume Tracing Experiments

Research Interests On-line function approximation based control - Aircraft control subsequent to battle damage - Respirator control (w/ local industry) High bandwidth cm level accuracy vehicle state estimation - Snowplow guidance - Automated highway systems Behavior based planning - Chemical plume tracing