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Can Robots Smell
Keegan Dillon • January 23, 2023
Bio-Hybrid Odor Robot
It is true that robots can smell! Scientists out of Tel Aviv University
have developed a biological sensor that will send electrical information in response to the presence of odor. The robot can then detect and interpret the sensory data.
Photo courtesy of: YouTube screen grab/Tel Aviv University
What is a locust antenna?
Israeli scientists recently created a robot capable of sensing smell stronger than any other robotic device ever built by wiring it with a locust-type antenna. The scientists got the idea from insects that use their antennae for many functions, including smell. Comparing a standard measuring device to the sensitivity of a locust nose, a locust has about 10,000 times higher sensitivity than any current measuring system.
The locust antenna has such a powerful sensor that scientists from Tel Aviv University believe it could replace police dogs. This robot-locus combination could alert authorities of explosives, diseases, and drugs.
Tel Aviv University is a world leader in part-animal part-machine technology, which Dr. Ben Maoz leads. The robot he and his colleagues created receives signals from its environment through a locust antenna they developed. During their studies, they found a way to keep the locust antenna artificially alive to develop a method to communicate the signals received from the antenna and get transmitted back to the robot.
How does a biological locust antenna work?
The experiment is now published at Science Direct, which states that they connected a biological sensor and let it smell different odors. The scientist measured the electrical activity induced by each fragrance they tested. The system allows scientists to identify each scent separately while being able to read at the same level as the locusts’ primary sensory organ.
The next step is to use machine learning to create a “library of smells.” The scientist at Tel Aviv University were then able to characterize eight unique odors during their trials and could identify if any of those distinct odors were present in the area. After the experiment, they continued to categorize other odors for future trials.
The biological locust antenna study.
In this study, they created a bio-hybrid odor discriminator operating with a desert locust’s central olfactory apparatus (antennae). This bio-hybrid was designed with simple artificial intelligence tools and electroantennogram technology for signal analysis. The discriminator can differentiate between at least eight pure smells and two mixtures of different odors, independent of any odor concentration.
With higher sensitivity of a magnitude of four orders than gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, the system can detect the scent of less than 1 ng of the volatile compounds. Compared to other bio-hybrid sensors currently available today, it could be operated by an unskilled person. This study opens the future for animal-machine robotic sensing tools that can be broadly deployed for many tasks.
Read the original research biological sensor study here: The Locust antenna as an odor discriminator.
Dr. Maoz thinks this research will lead the technological advances of smell detection in three major categories:
- The innovation of biological noses with sensors as prosthetic devices.
- He believes police could use the locus antenna sensor to detect illegal substances they have “smelled.”
- He thinks that doctors could use them to detect odor signals that are undetectable by humans, which would help identify specific diseases.
Dr. Maoz has always been interested in how humans could harness animals’ biological sense of smell. He notes that we already do this with dogs but didn’t want to rely on an actual animal because of maintenance, training, feeding, medical, and other forms of attention required.
According to The Times of Israel, Dr. Maoz stated, “I hope this could one day replace sniffer dogs at airports and provide many other possibilities. A biological nose is more sensitive than any technologies designed to smell. So, this could be used in new machines that use smell to identify explosives, drugs, diseases, rotten food, and many other things that can be detected by odor.”
Photo courtesy of: YouTube screen grab/Tel Aviv University
Will insects play a significant part in the evolution of electronics and robotics moving into the future? Dr. Maoz is convinced that insects will help this process move forward. He’s also thinking about more prominent in the part-animal part-machine technology sector, where he thinks using insect eyes as high-resolution cameras could be the next step. “Nature is much more advanced than we are, so we should use it,” Dr. Maoz said in The Times of Israel. “The principle we have demonstrated can be used and applied to other senses, such as sight and touch. The sky is the limit.”
Sources: Neuroscience News, The Times of Israel, Tel Aviv University.
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