Robots are generally equipped with at least several different modalities of sensors. Vision and range sensors are the most popular, especially in mobile robots. On the other hand, olfaction (or chemical sensing in general) had long been ignored in the robotics community because of the technical difficulties involved in realizing artificial olfaction on robotic platforms. Over the past two decades, however, various attempts are made to use chemical sensors in robotic applications. With the help of chemical sensors, mobile robots can follow chemical trails laid on the ground, track chemical plumes to find their sources, and build distribution maps of chemical substances. This paper is intended to present a brief history and the current trends of the research in this emerging field.

Accurate and prompt localization of hazardous release sources ensures a timely emergency response to potential damages. Robot odor source localization is the study of locating the release source based on mobile robots in real‐time, which has been experiencing rapid growth in recent years. This paper presents a review of this field, focusing on recent progress and development trends. Research works are grouped according to method principles, leading to four categories: reactive methods, heuristic searching methods, probabilistic inference methods, and learning methods. The odor‐source direction and distance prediction viain situsensing and developments of simulators are also listed separately for discussion. Several outlooks are highlighted at the end. Along with the developments of related fields and practical needs, we believe this field is bound to keep on flourishing in the future. © 2021 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Many animals have the ability to search for odor sources by tracking their plumes. Some of the key features of this search behavior have been successfully trans...