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Science

Digital Nose 47

Posted by emmett from the obligatory-proboscis-joke dept.
Tekmage writes "How long until someone equips Sony's Aibo to sniff out contamination at the old chemical plant? Cyrano Sciences describes a little of the technology behind their 'Nose Chip' here, and includes some neat examples."
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Digital Nose More

Digital Nose

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  • Just how reliable is that? Had a quick browse of the link but cant seem to find any result...

  • Or you could use the nose attached to your face :)
  • This has actually been out since last year. This and other related technologies are heating up, as improved processing techniques and new applications for existing technology provide design engineers with ideas. The problem with false results are due more to poor data processing than to poor information acquisition. On a related note, Texas Instruments has developed a device that can analyze any liquid sample and give results on-site without using a mass spectrometer. Spreeta Sensor [electronicproducts.com]. It is the size of a phono cartridge.
  • Read a book entitled "Murder in the Solid State".
    it is Near term SciFi about abuses of exactly this kind of technology.

  • To be honest, it's the false negatives that have me more worried...

    I don't expect to see real dogs replaced any time soon, but given the amount I travel, I would feel a little more comfortable if we could, say, equip every garbage can and mail-drop at an airport with the bomb-sniffing equivalent of a smoke detector.

    Given the breadth of substances the sensor can identify and differentiate (over existing explosive-specific sniffer tech), I would expect the number of false positives to go down with some intelligent signal processing. If you know that Vodka triggers the warning, this is a false-positive "noise factor" you could filter out. (in theory :-)
  • Indeed. Add the &lt smell &gt tag to html.

    I wonder if you could represent a smell graphically.
  • I can see one running around at a party or in a bar either set up as a "pointer" (as in dog) or with indicator lights reporting the chemically based inferred sexual receptivity of the individuals present. Perhaps future miniature versions in jewelry could track the subjects and report real-time changes as time, ingestion, and company had effects!
  • ...so I don't have to be bothered with knowing the date(or the year) when I want some milk.

    Hey machine, is this milk good :)

  • I wish I had the link, but I read somewhere that the French have a prototype for reproducing smells. The creators claimed that any smell can be synthesized by mixing 6 basic substances, so the appliance would have 6 containers and a mechanism to control the amount of each. It was first conceived as an add-on to videocassetes, but once it works in production it would be a snap to have this in computers.

    Picture if you would tags like

    &ltSMELL type="leather" intensity="high" persistance="volatile"&gt


    -------------------------

  • Re:Powered by Fairy Liquid (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I (as in myself) witnessed using this technology at certain checkpoint at a border between two very unfriendly statelike entities (I hope I'm vague enough :). It works.

    In a nutshell, I (Pvt. So-and-so) put a white glove on my hand, and go through a truck, wiping every imaginable surface with it. Then I give the glove to the mass spec guy (Sgt. Whats-his-name). Then mass spec sez (or supposed to) whether the truck was in contact with explosives. E.g. if the driver touched explosives recently, the steering wheel and everything else he touched will be contaminated. Next truck, next glove.

    I've seen this device tested. A bit of regular gunpowder was smeared on the ground, and the ground touched with the glove. Bzzt! Alarm.

    The mass spec however is not a handheld device. Very, very far from it.

  • "Cyrano Sciences"? Making devices which can smell? I love it! :)

    (For the literary-impaired: Cyrano de Bergerac had a big nose. :)

  • This got me thinking about the story that was going around yesterday with the camera input wired into his brain...I read an article in the local press which predicted 256-bit greyscale within 2 or three years. and a market-ready product by q4 this year.

    Added to this, modern hearing aids attach electronics directly into the inner ear, with vibration sensors outside the ear, to make people who would previously have been deaf, or almost deaf, hear perfectly again.

    This chip means (I guess) that we could do to smell what has been done to sight and hearing. All we need to fill the five senses now are electronic tongues (and I believe those exist already) and electronic nerves, with an interface to the brain.

    The way I see it, injury-related (as opposed to genetic dystrophic disease related) paralysis could be a thing of the past in about 30 years... now if we could only persuade people to have less fear of science, we might be able to preemp things like muscular dystrophy by then too.

    Why is it that the Mary Shelleys of this world always turn up on the cusp of centuries?

    Dave Neary.

  • Nose chip? Well, its not quite my dream ass chip [blockstackers.com] yet, but dangnabbit is cience isn't getting closer -- just at the wrong end of the body. >

    "This post was pointless. If this post has had a point, it would have stood up and waved a little blue flag that says 'hey, I have a point here.'"
  • There are a number of computerized sinffers available and have been for quite a while. Some that yes, even sniff for drugs. One was even approved by the government. Very cheesy site [estcal.com] but contains alot of information. Also there are many others that are here [uia.ac.be].

    -
  • Sony's AIBO site is http://www.world.sony.com/aibo, _NOT_ www.aibo.com!! The latter is some fan-created site...
  • Someone can carry one of these little devices into a KFC and settle the "is it eleven herbs and spices or just monosodium glutemate and pepper?" argument. :)
  • Wow, this thing only ways about 2lb /0.91kg.

    This just for the handhels unit shown here [cyranosciences.com] I'll bet that they can get this thing down to the size of a watch, and it'll be the next yuppie thing. Hell, I might. buy one if it came down to the 2K range.

    Could this be used as a robot bloodhound? They claim that it can work in almost any environment, but how good is it at distinguishing similar odours?

    The article claims it can be used for testing if two smells are similar, I'm guessing that this is one of the things it is realy good at. But is it better than a real dog? Can this device be used to help obsure contraband by acting as a simple test to see if the contraband can be smelt?

  • I wonder how many false positives would come from hunters, gun owners, and around the 4th of July...

  • Whoa, new meaning to "picking your nose"; I like the blue one, but I really need something that can filter on esters...

    But seriously, imagine a smoke detector that could distinguish between cigarette smoke, wood/paper smoke (from a fireplace), smoke from a grease fire, etc. How about a "is this really sanitary?" sensor for a house-cleaning 'bot? For that matter, I would think that hospitals could use something that keys off of olafactory cues. What about a Mars Rover type robot (assuming we ever relearn the landing-on-Mars trick) that sniffs for water vapor (as in ice deposits) or other potential "life" indicators while it's poking at rocks? Heck, I could probably use a device to warn me that I've gotten carried away with the after-shave before a date...

  • C.D.B.'s nose is no longer than Howard Stern's. Steve Martin's in Roxanne, on the other hand...

    So why didn't they call it Pinocchio [tripod.com]? He [google.com] had a big nose too.
    (Sorry, that was Clinton. Look halfway down this page [freerepublic.com].)




    --
    Don't click here. [xoom.com]

  • Wow that's something else. I can just see it now.
    Walking thru the airport getting sniffed
    by an aibo. At least it can't get stoned. :-)
    BTW. Whatever happened to using birds to sniff stuff out?
  • We've had WebCams for ages, how about someone
    doing a WebNose?
  • Just pray that no one puts one in the wrestlers
    lockeroom.
  • They already have the technology to do this. When my daughter was travelling recently, they swabbed down her backpack and put it into an analyzer. I think the movement to electro-mechanical methods will happen pretty quickly since it's more reproducible than using animals. It's also tireless and easier to provide to "lots" of sites in a short time. It can also be augmented and retrained to new and emerging threats much easier. Most of the animals currently used are single threat detectors. There are drug dogs and bomb dogs but not dogs trained in both. (do you really want the cross-trained drug dog getting all excited and clawing at a suspected bomb package?)
  • Wow, this thing only ways about 2lb /0.91kg.

    Could this be used as a robot bloodhound? They claim that it can work in almost any environment, but how good is it at distinguishing similar odours?
  • Ha. Sniff, Sniff, growl pop.
  • One of the guys I work with was on a project years ago which used a mass spec to 'sniff' explosives and other illegal substances. Well one day they decided to test it live at the Port of Dover ( UK ), one of the trucks comming off the ship triggered the sniffer and so they searched it. Nothing was found so they then stripped the whole truck, still nothing. It turns out the the container on the truck had been cleaned out with washing up liquid and this had triggered the sniffer, they had only tested with illegal substances and not anything else.
  • Quite a few I'd have guessed.

    I remember when the explosive sniffers were new, they claimed to be able to detect someone who had shaken hands with someone who had shaken hands with someone who had been handling explosives.

  • realaroma.com [realaroma.com] may have something about this. However, it eerily resembles GenitalDrive [fufme.com]...

    Now what's on the smellevision tonight?

  • First of all, the mechanical-sniffing technology isn't exactly new. I have witnessed it in several airports, sometimes with rather amusing results. For instance, a bottle of Vodka will trigger an explosive warning, whereas a bottle of single malt scotch will not.
    So the really interesting question to ask is how prone this new device is to trigger on completely unrelated substances - there is not much point in using this as a replacement for drug or bomb dogs, if it overloads the staff checking the positives. Sooner or later this will lead to a situation where a real bomb or firearm passes undetected onto an airplane because of the last 100 false positives.
    So, does anybody have any idea if this thing is better at staying focused on what really matters?
  • This could be used to step up enforcement of drug laws. Imagine police with hand-held devices that can detect traces of cocaine, marijuana, &c. When these devices find a trace, they can at the touch of a button call a base and get a (digitally signed, automated) search warrant, within seconds.

    A few decades in the future, there may even be clouds of near-ubiquitous drug-sniffer robots, each the size of a grain of pollen. These would be able to notify the police whenever and wherever drugs were detected.

    Might not be healthy, having clouds of machinery floating in the air we breathe, but it's For Our Own Good.
  • Easy way to clear out a Web discussion you don't like:

    <SMELL type="intestinal gas" intensity="overpowering" persistence="volatile">
    --
  • Good Idea. But what we need now is a device that can replicate the smell at a remote location. A WebNose wouldn't be much good if it just broadcast a few lines of text describing the smell. I want to be able to smell the smell.

  • Re:Eyes, ears and nose...now all we need's nerves. (Score:3)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2000 @04:04AM (#1359566)
    "Added to this, modern hearing aids attach electronics directly into the inner ear, with vibration sensors outside the ear, to make people who would previously have been deaf, or almost deaf, hear perfectly again"

    'Perfectly' is a significant exaggeration - assuming you are talking about cochlear implants, which are the only implant for deaf people that I've heard of, results vary significantly depending on factors such as whether the person has ever had hearing and if so, how long they ahve been deaf. There's a reasonable overview at
    http://www.voice-center.com/cochlear_implants.ht ml

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