ArticleJournal of visualized experiments : JoVE2014
Using insect electroantennogram sensors on autonomous robots for olfactory searches.
Article in Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Illicit Drug-Derived Volatile Organic Compounds as Markers for Application in Noncontact Detection Technology.Chemical record (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Review
- Development of automatic insect-tracking robot system for measuring local activity changes in free walking.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Article
- High-speed odor sensing using miniaturized electronic nose.Science advances · 2024Article
- Ethics and responsibility in biohybrid robotics research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Ear-Bot: Locust Ear-on-a-Chip Bio-Hybrid Platform.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Light-Weight Portable Electroantennography Device as a Future Field-Based Tool for Applied Chemical Ecology.Journal of chemical ecology · 2020Article
- A Study of Modified Infotaxis Algorithms in 2D and 3D Turbulent Environments.Computational intelligence and neuroscience · 2020Article
- Dropping Counter: A Detection Algorithm for Identifying Odour-Evoked Responses from Noisy Electroantennograms Measured by a Flying Robot.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Fast Measurements with MOX Sensors: A Least-Squares Approach to Blind Deconvolution.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Organismal Engineering: Towards a Robotic Taxonomic Key for Devices Using Organic Materials.Science robotics · 2017Article
- Insect-controlled Robot: A Mobile Robot Platform to Evaluate the Odor-tracking Capability of an Insect.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2016Article
- High-speed odor transduction and pulse tracking by insect olfactory receptor neurons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2014Article
- Reactive searching and infotaxis in odor source localization.PLoS computational biology · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Robots designed to track chemical leaks in hazardous industrial facilities or explosive traces in landmine fields face the same problem as insects foraging for food or searching for mates: the olfactory search is constrained by the physics of turbulent transport. The concentration landscape of wind borne odors is discontinuous and consists of sporadically located patches. A pre-requisite to olfactory search is that intermittent odor patches are detected. Because of its high speed and sensitivity, the olfactory organ of insects provides a unique opportunity for detection. Insect antennae have been used in the past to detect not only sex pheromones but also chemicals that are relevant to humans, e.g., volatile compounds emanating from cancer cells or toxic and illicit substances. We describe here a protocol for using insect antennae on autonomous robots and present a proof of concept for tracking odor plumes to their source. The global response of olfactory neurons is recorded in situ in the form of electroantennograms (EAGs). Our experimental design, based on a whole insect preparation, allows stable recordings within a working day. In comparison, EAGs on excised antennae have a lifetime of 2 hr. A custom hardware/software interface was developed between the EAG electrodes and a robot. The measurement system resolves individual odor patches up to 10 Hz, which exceeds the time scale of artificial chemical sensors. The efficiency of EAG sensors for olfactory searches is further demonstrated in driving the robot toward a source of pheromone. By using identical olfactory stimuli and sensors as in real animals, our robotic platform provides a direct means for testing biological hypotheses about olfactory coding and search strategies. It may also prove beneficial for detecting other odorants of interests by combining EAGs from different insect species in a bioelectronic nose configuration or using nanostructured gas sensors that mimic insect antennae.
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