Crayfish Robot That Generates Flow Field to Enhance Chemical Reception

Mari Ohashi, Yoshinori Kagawa, Tomomichi Nakatsuka, Hiroshi Ishida

Graduate School of Bio-Applications and Systems Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

DOI: 10.4236/jst.2012.24026                

Abstract

This paper describes a wheeled underwater robot developed for locating chemical sources autonomously under stagnant flow conditions. In still water, the released chemical stays in the immediate vicinity of the source location. The search for chemical sources under such conditions is extremely laborious since the presence of a chemical source cannot be detected from a distant place. The chemical sensors on the robot show no response unless a chemical substance released from the source arrives at the sensors. Crayfish in search of food are known to actively generate water currents by waving their small appendages with a fan-like shape. It is considered that the generated water currents help their olfactory search. The smell of food is carried to their olfactory organs from the surroundings by the generated flow, and then is perceived. The robot presented in this paper employs arms mimicking the maxillipeds of a crayfish to generate water currents and to draw chemicals to its sensors. By waving the arms vertically, a three-dimensional flow field is generated and water samples are drawn from a wide angular range. The direction of a chemical source can be determined by comparing the responses of four laterally aligned electrochemical sensors. Experimental results show that the flow field generated by the maxilliped arms is more effective in collecting chemical samples onto the sensors than that generated by a pump. The robot equipped with the maxilliped arms can detect the presence of a chemical source even if the source is placed off the trajectory of the robot.

Keywords

Active Sensing; Underwater Robot; Chemical Sensor; Crayfish

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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