Caltech Creates Electronic Nose 154
eldavojohn writes "Researchers have created an electronic nose that can detect odor and identify which odors are a concern to it. From the article, 'The Lewis Group a division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech have a working model of an electronic nose. The efforts of Caltech scientists has led to an array of simple, readily fabricated chemically sensitive conducted polymer film. An array of broadly-cross reactive sensors respond to a variety of odors. However, the pattern of differential responses across the array produces a unique pattern for each odorant. The electronic nose can identify, classify and quantify when necessary the vapor or odor that poses a concern or threat.'"
Why fix what isn't broken? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, a decade at least (Score:3, Informative)
They did commercialise it. The technology is used all over the place.
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/suppl_1/i252 [oxfordjournals.org]
http://www.wordspy.com/words/noseonachip.asp [wordspy.com]
Of course, I'm sure Caltech can patent it can sue the bastards into oblivion.
Re:Artificial Nose (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Old news? (Score:4, Informative)
Am I the only person (in the UK) who saw the Tomorrow's World back in the days of Phillipa Forester or earlier where they had something IDENTICAL to this and were "on the verge" of commercialising it.
This is in fact old news. The first publication from this research group regarding chemical sensing was in 1995. I don't think any major breakthroughs have been made recently.
See http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/7/2652 [pnas.org]
That's not to say it isn't interesting - I have experience in the chemical sensing field so I think it's cool - but it's definitely not news.
Something similar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why fix what isn't broken? (Score:2, Informative)