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.'"

Comments

Why fix what isn't broken?

[TheTopher]

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"

Re:Why fix what isn't broken?

[3.1415926535]

veryone who went to Caltech was a student of Nate Lewis. He teaches the required freshman introductory chem class.

Yup, a decade at least

[Colin Smith]

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.

Re:Artificial Nose

[crontabminusell]

Vision, that's easy, cameras have sharper resolution than our pathetic biological eyes. I wondered about this, so I decided to look it up. At http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html the writer seems to sum up the topic pretty nicely. It seems that, while our eyes have probably been surpassed by technology when looking at resolution only (think http://www.gigapxl.org/ ), the image processing power of the brain exceeds any of our current technology. I guess our eyes aren't quite obsolete yet. ;)

Re:Old news?

[Mr. Underbridge]

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

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

[curious.corn]

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...