1. Chemical Plume Tracing
Jay A. Farrell, Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Riverside 92521 e: v: f:
url:

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)”

5. Autonomous Vehicle Architecture

6. Behavior Switching

7. AUV Plume Tracing Simulation

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

9. In-water Experimental Results

10. AUV Plume Tracing Experiments

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

12. Can Plume width predict range?
Movie by Todd Cowen

13. 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

14. AUV Plume Tracing Experiments

15. 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