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Digital Nose
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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Or you could use the nose attached to your face
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Read a book entitled "Murder in the Solid State".
it is Near term SciFi about abuses of exactly this kind of technology.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
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
--The more you know, the less you know.
...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
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.
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 but contains alot of information. Also there are many others that are here.
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off and out
This just for the handhels unit shown here 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?
-no broken link
I wonder how many false positives would come from hunters, gun owners, and around the 4th of July...
Just pray that no one puts one in the wrestlers
lockeroom.
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M-x all-hail-emacs RET
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?
//Wegge
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">
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota