NASA's E-Nose: It Smells, But It's Improving

ahaning writes: "Yes, even NASA has succumbed to the "e + (someword)" phenomenon. The E-Nose is apparently one of the toys they took along with them on the last shuttle mission. NASA engineers are currently working on making the tool smaller and enabling it to "sniff" out more chemicals. One of the more interesting uses that they give for us on earth is determining whether a plant is ripe enough for harvest. Perhaps someday we could have huge robots out in the middle of a field with nanobugs roaming the place, checking the fruits and vegetables. When they find a ripe one, they signal the robot with their position and it reaches out and plucks the thing carefully off of the plant. That would be cool." Anti-counterfiting, explosive detection, apply-deodorant alert ... the possibilities are endless. What would you use an electronic nose for?

Comments

We can install them in elevators!

[darylp]

That way we can always know with pinpoint accuracy who REALLY farted!

Possible uses for an e-nose

[Raindeer]

Well the following three uses come to my mind:

1. Smelling if food can still be eaten, or if it has evolved too far already. Very handy in dorms like mine
2. Smelling out female feromones, this way you don't need to spend all that money on a girl who doesn't like you anyways. Along the same line would be an application that tells you the perfume she is wearing. Makes good pick-up lines.
3. Lie-detector, based on the increase in sweating of a person. Crude, but it might help in finding out if the Market-droid really is telling the truth

There might also be more sound uses, but then again, technology is never used for the things it was intended for.