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Caltech Creates Electronic Nose
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.'"
As a student at Caltech in Prof. Nate Lewis' Chemistry class, I feel obligated to ask why the correct spelling of "Caltech" from the article was converted into the incorrect spellings of "CalTech" and "Cal Tech"? I realize that we don't conform to the usual abbreviation for Tech schools but it's a "little t" for "Caltech"
I've always thought it interesting that creating an artificial nose (sense of smell) has lagged so far behind the other senses. Vision, that's easy, cameras have sharper resolution than our pathetic biological eyes. Hearing, again, sensitivity of microphones has easily surpassed human ability. There's the sense of touch, but we can cheat and make sensors that detect resistance to motion, being able to feel and discern texture is harder however. Sense of smell is probably the most abstracted and subjective, so it's no wonder it's the most difficult to replicate with technology. Most of the artificial "nose" tech is just checking for the presence of certain chemicals in the air.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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.
I seem to remember something about they discovered the material being tested for aircraft use until they realised that the strong odours of a busy airport made the properties of the material change, then they put it into an electronic nose. I also remember a demo where the machine detected the difference between "normal" and "rancid" mayonnaise by smell alone.
It seems that this is one of those inventions that just keeps popping up but nobody ever really finds a commercial use for it that can make all the development costs worthwhile.
Because futuristic elevators are going to be really awkward.
We got an electronic nose. All I want now is a robotic cow that grows all it's meat back after you slaughter it.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Great, can it be installed in a car to automatically roll down the windows when someone rips one?
does it run linux?
Whoever smell'd it dealt it
which is totally what she said
Great. Now not only can we tell if the crapper in the frat house is occupied through the frat LAN, we'll know who's in it.
Cue remark about how this may be used for anti-terr'ism purposes in 3...
2...
1...
Whoever made the rhyme did the crime.
(as my son gleefully informed us the other day)
liqbase
All together now:
AWFUL!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
... now the computer will tell when a shower is needed.
Anyone care to comment on how this has effected marijuana prices on the caltech campus ?
[site]
...and Slashdot creates electronic noise...
It is well known that dogs keen sense of smell can detect illness and cancers. Lets hope this thing can be turned into something sensitive enough and cheap enough for widespread medical use. This could save lives.
for the interested: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html
Back in the early 90's, an "electronic nose" was created at the applied physics department at Linköping University, Sweden. One of the researchers were named Anita Spetz, another was Ingemar Lundström.
Great! Now there's gonna be another way to 'pick' your nose... Or is that to 'pick (out)' your Robot's nose?
"You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose." -Unknown
Does it come with an Electronic Handkerchief?
Whoever smell'd it dealt it
____
I'll wait for the inexpensive fart detector to tell the dealer.
FRY: This is a great, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus. Heh heh.
LEELA: I don't get it.
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
FRY: Oh. What's it called now?
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: Urectum.
I'll wager 400 quatloos on the newcomer
Finally, a use for my new invention, the electric fart.
If all the electronic vision/sound/touch/smell data could be put in a computer which had a simple program of recalling reactions according to those data, we could have the foundations for an electronic brain.
And if the reactions are driven to motors which could move body parts, then we are one step closer to making an android.
is what I at first thought they had created. I was not impressed. Then I realized it was an electronic *nose*... Still not impressed.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Michael Jackson could use a new one.
I actually worked in the lab where they developed the machine. UMIST in Manchester.
They did commercialise it. The technology is used all over the place.
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/suppl_1/i252
http://www.wordspy.com/words/noseonachip.asp
Of course, I'm sure Caltech can patent it can sue the bastards into oblivion.
Deleted
I'm serious, dogs can smell some types of cancer (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html) (including lung cancer) there have been instances of dogs scratching at people's legs, and when they go to doctors there are malignant melanomas. It'd be interesting to see if this can be replicated and used as a medical device.
The good news is, scientists have developed a robotic nose. The bad news is, it's a dog's nose, so it robotically sniffs your butt.
To be fully functional, does it also generate the odor ?
We can only imagine what they'll build for the CalTech nose to sniff...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As seen on CSI: http://www.smithsdetection.com/eng/1383.php
Caltech - Reinventing the wheel ever since.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Great. My dog finally stopped sniffing the crotch of everyone who visits my house. Now my Roomba is going to start.
Didn't I already see this on CSI? nick wanted this new gadget but Grissom said they could not afford it. he ends up using it in a case and in the end Grissom orders it. /shrug
...on how often they reload the Mucus Module (TM).
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
www.appliedsensor.com did this around year 2000.
They had a commercially available machine that could sniff at a sample and tell you what it was. The "nose" was not a commercial success and was discontinued.
Are you guys trying to copy the clowns who do "first post" halfway down slashdot's page?
-mcgrew
(laugh dammit)
Finally something that tells gamers when they need to take a shower :>
"My dog has no nose."
"How does it smell?"
"Terrible!"
Something similar, the Libra nose has been developed in Italy, at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". The article is slim on the transducer CalTech is using...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
I was working on an almost identical system in the UK literally 10 years ago... and I know we have patents on it... I wonder if they took care of the saturation issues... Still nice to see someone else picking up on the work though...
I wonder how many 'scientist' farted in front of this thing for a chuckle?
...identify, classify and quantify...
...
...
if ((sensor1 > 25)&&(sensor2 > 75))
{
substance1detected = TRUE;
}
if (substance1detected)
{
substancearray[1]++;
}
call DumpSubtanceList(substancearray);
What's with all the overly-hopeful anthropomorphization lately on Slashdot? I thought this place was more geared toward IT professionals than those likely to be impressed with hype targeting the general public.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
people with bad breath, guys that smell like old running shoes could benefit from having an alert device... better than getting cued by disgusted reactions (this is not based on personal experience!)
Can it smell fear?
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
Will the electronic tongue that can taste be programmed with Lisp?
Registered Linux User #449434
I thought they said "electronic noise" and I was like "I've been doing that for almost 10 years now." I guess I don't have any insight, as I'm not an olfactory maven...
Where's the cocaine transistor?
--
make install -not war
Now I do not mean to underestimate what was achieved, but the problems we had when I was studying the matter was principally one of sensor drift over time. You can slap a bunch of gas sensors together, study their various reactions to various "odor" stimulus, and even get to identify those with various processing techniques, including neural nets.
But the crux of the problem was that the sensor response varied greatly in time, rendering the signal processing useless over time. Unless a re-calibration of the whole system was done all over again.
Do someone close to the research team (or with enough time to read) knows whether some advances have been made in that direction ?
[Pruneau
University of Texas came out with an electronic tongue 8 years ago: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/articles/19981026319/index.cfm
I think they've developed a nose since then, but can't find a good link.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
"Smelt?" I dunno... Sounds fishy to me.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
A nose by any other name would still smell...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The article has it twice correctly as Caltech and once as Cal Tech (up near the top).
Bugs me too, dude, but I think this is a battle we are going to lose, long term. Even the City of Pasadena has roadsigns pointing to campus that spell it as two words.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I don't know about Tomorrow's World, but I know that Nate Lewis has been doing this for at least ten years, because I remember seeing presentations about it my first year of grad school, way back when (1997). At one point he and other Caltech people even spun off a company, Cyrano Systems, to market the thing. And *that* was at least six years ago.
Reading TFA, I didn't see any info in the article that was different from what I saw presented a decade ago. I'm sure they've improved the e-nose a ton in those ten years, but TFA sure didn't give any specifics, it just treated the e-nose as a new idea. Which it isn't.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Whoever smelled it Dell'd it?
Dude! You're getting a fart!
"But this one goes to 11!"
this isn't my nose it's a false one!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
I will make some eletronic cocaine and get filthy rich!
If it got too good you'd never be able to pretend it wasn't you.
Dave: "For cry'n out loud Steve, what the hell did you eat!?"
Nose 9000: "Sorry Dave, it wasn't Steve, I have traced the odor trail back to your buttocks."
Dave: "What? How!?"
Nose 9000: "Even though you tried to fan it and walk away from it I was able to pinpoint the sound too."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Does this mean us techy type are going to have to bathe more often? :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The PhysOrg article is a bit misleading. I work in the Lewis Group on a solar energy project but am somewhat familiar with the nose research. Work on the electronic nose in the group has been ongoing since at least 1994 (one of the first articles our group published on it is here), and a more accurate (but outdated) description of the research is available on the group site. Several other groups have been doing similar research for some time. Current work in the group includes the development of mathematical models to describe sensor response, the use of various nanomaterials as sensors, the development of spatiotemporal sensor arrays, and the creation of piezoelectric chemical vapor sensors. The current research is interesting and exciting, but the tone of the PhysOrg article would have been more approprate had it been written 10-15 years ago.
> 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.
"And you can see right here, look at response matrix 74-delta-zed, that's the one that detects 'smells like ass'."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Not the typical patent question, but rather relating to consequences of invention: will this device make scents patentable? Currently you cannot patent a particular scent (e.g. perfume, cologne, bouquet of wine), but what if the uniqueness of a scent was quantifiable through the use of just such a device?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
welcome our new cloned electronic overlord.
In bathrooms all over my campus, they have these automatic air fresheners. They don't have timers, they sniff the air and they *know* when someone takes a crap. They respond pretty quickly too. Many times I've sat and anticipated the "pfft" sound that follows a stinky #2 or a big fart.
I know my message will get modded down, but I'm totally serious and there's really no polite way to describe these things.
Previous posters were right when saying this has been done before. In fact, I've purchased the Cyranose 320 made by Smiths Detection for a project at the University of Kansas I was working on. We were actually going to use it for authentication. Instead the project ended and we configured it to distinguish between different beers. It worked great!
How does it smell?
Awful.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Finally, we can now answer that age-old question which has plagued mankind since the dawn of time: "Who farted?"
Proverbs 21:19
Law enforcement setting up camera devices that trigger at the scent of pot smoke.
High School bathrooms that do the same with tobacco.
I want to put a budget one outside my window to turn on a light when it detects my friendly neighborhood skunk (skunks don't like the light)-- as he rather likes the grubs that hang out in the patch of moss under my window. Right now when I'm woken up at 3AM by the pungent smell, I have to turn on the light manually...
Richard Rich Sr.: [on Prof. Keenbean's Smellmaster 9000] Glasses, electronic aids and surgery help us see and hear better. Isn't it time we had something to help us SMELL better?
Regina Rich: We already do, dear. It's called Chanel.
In my Computer Engineering final project at a non-major university, my group was assigned the task of creating an electronic nose. I believe the prof was researching it, so it wasn't exactly old news at that point, but the concepts had been around for a while.
Ours used a run-of-the-mill smoke detector sensor suspended in a series of tubes. Air was pulled through the tubes with a couple small fans which were controlled by a computer. At one end of the system, the sample was placed in a jar so that air would pass gently over it on its way to the sensor. We measured the voltage response from the sensor and fed the discrete waveform into a neural net. After a little training, it could detect coffee, vinegar, apple juice and various other smells. If I recall, the main problem with the design was that the manufacturing process for the detector wasn't consistent enough for the neural net to be re-usable, so we'd have to retrain it for each sensor's response characteristics.
I for 1 have no sense of smell. Mock me if you must. There are corrective lenses for my near or far sighted friends and hearing aids for the auditory impaired. But naught for me!
... I'd like to know if there was a skunk right BEHIND ME.
Think about the last time you had a really bad cold and couldn't smell anything. Did food taste good? Could you smell a pretty flower? Could you even tell if the gas was leaking and you were gonna die in your sleep? The poster with the skunk problem would like to sleep through the night
Now if only they could make it as innocuous as glasses or a hearing aid.
How did they know what to make it out of?
</obscurereference>
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This entire nose thread blows.
There might be cameras with higher resolution than our eyes, but they don't have automatic multi-frame resolution enhancement, or the resolution enhancement that's based on different sensitivities to different colors, or automatic motion tracking, or an insanely complex autoassociative classifier system that fills in the blurry spots, etc...
Humans have all of this and more, running at about 20 frames per second.
Hearing is the same way, as are touch and taste. For example, what kind of sensor do we have that gives the kind of information that comes out of just our skin (let alone fits in the same form-factor)?