TY - CONF A1 - Neumann, Patrick P. A1 - Hirschberger, Paul A1 - Bartholmai, Matthias T1 - Flying Ant Robot – Aerial Chemical Trail Detection and Localization T2 - Proceedings of the IEEE Sensors 2021 N2 - This paper presents first advances in the area of aerial chemical trail following. For that purpose, we equipped a palm-size aerial robot, based on the Crazyflie 2.0 quadrocopter, with a small lightweight metal oxide gas sensor for measuring evaporated ethanol from chemical trails. To detect and localize the chemical trail, a novel detection criterion was developed that uses only relative changes in the transient phase of the sensor response, making it more robust in its application. We tested our setup in first crossing-trail experiments showing that our flying ant robot is able to correlate an odor hit with the chemical trail within 0.14 m. Principally, this could enable aerial chemical trail following in the future. T2 - IEEE Sensors 2021 CY - Online meeting DA - 31.10.2021 KW - Nano aerial robot KW - Trail following KW - Trail detection KW - Localization PY - 2021 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/sensors47087.2021.9639857 SP - 1 EP - 4 PB - IEEE AN - OPUS4-53933 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Neumann, Patrick P. A1 - Hüllmann, Dino A1 - Bartholmai, Matthias ED - Pastramă, Ş. D. ED - Constantinescu, D. M. T1 - Concept of a gas-sensitive nano aerial robot swarm for indoor air quality monitoring JF - Materials Today: Proceedings N2 - In this paper, we introduce a nano aerial robot swarm for indoor air quality monitoring applications such as occupational health and safety of (industrial) workplaces. The concept combines a robotic swarm composing of nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (nano UAVs), based on the Crazyflie 2.0 quadrocopter, and small lightweight metal oxide gas sensors for measuring the Total Volatile Organic Compound (TVOC) in ppb and estimating the eCO2 (equivalent calculated carbon-dioxide) concentration in ppm. TVOC is a measure for the indoor air quality. An indoor localization and positioning system will be used to estimate the absolute 3D position of the swarm like GPS. Based on this novel indoor air quality monitoring concept, the development and validation of new algorithms in the field of Mobile Robot Olfaction (MRO) are planned, namely gas source localization and gas distribution mapping. A test scenario will be built up to validate and optimize the gas-sensitive nano aerial robot swarm for the intended applications. T2 - 35th Danubia Adria Symposium on Advances in Experimental Mechanics CY - Sinaia, Romania DA - 25.09.2018 KW - Nano aerial robot KW - UAV KW - Swarm KW - Indoor air quality KW - Monitoring KW - Concept PY - 2019 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.03.151 SN - 2214-7853 VL - 12 IS - 2 SP - 470 EP - 473 PB - Elsevier Ltd. CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-48055 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Neumann, Patrick P. A1 - Hirschberger, Paul A1 - Bartholmai, Matthias ED - Zemčík, R. ED - Krystek, J. T1 - Influence of rotor downwash on vertically displaced nanobots in flight JF - Materials Today: Proceedings N2 - One challenge associated with navigating a nano aerial robot swarm indoors in unstructured environments is, i.a., the limited air space. To avoid an over-regulation of the available indoor air space (e.g., prohibit copters to fly above each other), a safety region around each copter must be defined. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the downwash of a nano-drone on the stability of another nearby nano-drone. In the experiments, we found out that this downwash has a negative influence of a second nano-drone in a distance of around 1 m vertically and 0.2 m horizontally. Based on the obtained data, we developed a model describing the above-mentioned safety region to enable a safe operation of the swarm in these environments with fewer constraints. T2 - 36th Danubia-Adria Symposium on Advances in Experimental Mechanics CY - Pilsen, Czech Republic DA - 24.09.2019 KW - Mobile Robot Olfaction KW - Nano aerial robot KW - Swarm KW - Collision-free navigation KW - Safety region model PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.047 VL - 32 IS - 2 SP - 108 EP - 111 PB - Elsevier Ltd. CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-50673 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Häusler, F. A1 - Stührenberg, J. A1 - Smarsly, K. A1 - Neumann, Patrick P. T1 - Bout-based Gas Source Localization using Aerial Robot Swarms T2 - IEEE Sensors 2023 Conference Proceedings N2 - Gas source localization (GSL) helps mitigate the impact of industrial accidents and natural disasters. While GSL may be dangerous and time-consuming when performed by humans, swarms of agile and inexpensive nano aerial robots may increase the safety and efficiency of gas source localizations. Since the small payloads of nano aerial robots limit the sensing and computing resources, strategies adapted from biological swarms, such as colonies of social insects, are used to coordinate robot swarms. Most swarm GSL strategies are based on the assumption that the maxima of gas concentrations are sufficiently close to the gas sources. However, prior studies have indicated that the occurrence of “bouts”, a metric for the intermittency of gas distributions, may advantageously be used as a more accurate gas source proximity indicator. This paper presents a swarm GSL strategy employing bouts as source proximity indicators and a bio-inspired pheromone system for communication. Nano aerial robots, deployed in this study, act as agents and emit pheromone markers in an artificial environment upon detecting bouts. Leveraging the concept of artificial potential fields, the agents switch between exploiting the knowledge of the swarm by following pheromone gradients and exploring the search space by targeting a random point. The agents are repelled by each other and by walls to avoid collisions. The swarm GSL strategy is implemented into three nano aerial robots and validated in a real-world experiment in an indoor environment with a single gas source. The results indicate that the the swarm GSL strategy presented in this paper is capable of GSL in indoor environments and that the intermittency of gas distributions is a better source proximity indicator than the mean concentration. T2 - IEEE Sensors 2023 CY - Vienna, Austria DA - 29.10.2023 KW - Mobile robotic olfaction KW - Nano aerial robot KW - Gas source localization KW - Bouts KW - Distributed robotics PY - 2023 SN - 979-8-3503-0387-2 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/sensors56945.2023.10325109 SP - 1 EP - 4 PB - IEEE AN - OPUS4-58778 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -