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e-Nose Odor Detecting Devices Smell Good for AI Driverless Cars Innovation
Dr. Lance B. Eliot, AI Insider
Consider for a moment your nose. Yes, your nose. The human nose has an amazing capability to detect odors and remains as one of the “last frontier” areas for trying to duplicate this same functionality into an electronic sensor of some kind. If you have an idea of how to make a fully capable e-nose, an electronic nose, you could be sitting on a goldmine.
Light sensors such as cameras are pretty well matured and can readily take the energy wavelengths of light and capture it for us. Sound sensors such as microphones are pretty well matured and can readily take the energy of sound and capture it for us. Odors are trickier because the nose functions by detecting molecules representing odors, which becomes a form of mass measurement rather than energy measurement. Attempts to develop e-nose devices have generally met with difficulty and perfecting a bioelectronic nose or machine olfaction is still an open avenue awaiting a breakthrough.
The interaction of the physiological aspects of the nose and the psychological aspects of the brain are a wonderment.
As an example, the other day I was walking through a farmer’s market in downtown Los Angeles and was joyfully taking a look at the dozens upon dozens of food items…
