By 2023, there will be cameras and microphones that will match and exceed the capabilities of human sight and hearing. But for all our technological advances, humans have failed to build a better nose. After all, evolution has had millions of years to perfect the receptors that humans, animals, and insects use to identify odors. But, with nature’s help, scientists may have made a breakthrough on that front.
In a study published Monday in the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronicsa group of researchers from Tel Aviv University (via ) said they recently created a robot that can identify a handful of odors with 10,000 times more sensitivity than some specialized electronic devices. They describe their robot as a biohybrid platform (read: cyborg). It has a set of antennae taken from a which is connected to an electronic system that measures the amount of electrical signal that the antennae produce when they detect an odor. They paired the robot with an algorithm that learned to characterize odors by their signal output. In this way, the team created a system that could reliably differentiate between eight “pure” odours, including geranium, lemon and marzipan, and two different odor mixtures. Scientists say their robot could one day be used to detect drugs and explosives.
A YouTube video from Tel Aviv University claims the robot is a “scientific first,” but last June, researchers at Michigan State University published research detailing a system that uses surgically altered lobsters to. In 2016, scientists also attempted to turn lobsters into bomb-sniffing cyborgs. What can I say, after millennia of causing crop failures, pests might finally be useful for something.
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