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Artificial noses

Picture the smell

Nature volume 406, pages 682–683 (2000)Cite this article

There is a growing interest in ‘soft’ measurement techniques that measure a particular quality of a sample rather than the quantities of individual properties making up this quality. This type of information gathering mimics the human senses, and has led to the development of ‘electronic noses’ for environmental monitoring, medical testing, and food and drink production. In the most sophisticated systems a unique chemical fingerprint can be generated by an array of sensors and then identified by pattern-recognition techniques as the smell of a rose, for example. On page 710 of this issue1, Rakow and Suslick suggest that human vision may soon become an important part of what is now known as artificial olfaction.

Attempts to measure odours with electronic instruments2 were made as early as the 1950s, but the modern field of artificial olfaction began in 1982 with the work of Persaud and Dodd3, who used a small array of gas-sensitive metal-oxide devices to classify odours. There has since been a steady increase in the number of systems using chemical sensor arrays. The success of artificial olfaction depends not only on the development of new sensor technologies, but also on the availability of powerful pattern-recognition software. This is particularly important for sensor arrays that produce a composite response.

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Figure 1: Smelling by colour.

References

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  1. Division of Applied Physics, Linköpings Universitet, Linköping, SE-581 83, Sweden

    Ingemar Lundström

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  1. Ingemar Lundström
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Correspondence to Ingemar Lundström.

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Lundström, I. Picture the smell. Nature 406, 682–683 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35021156

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