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Personal Sniffer Robots
These two "robots" with what amounts to an electronic nose have resulted from a partnership with the company CrazyLobo and the Kitakyushu National College of Technology in Japan.
The robots use sensors to let you know if you have an oderiferous personal hygiene problem. The Bulldog robot act similar as the natural one by sniffing your feet for odor. If they produce an offensive smell, the robot faints. Well, if they smell good, it comes closer to sniff more.
The one that is shaped like a woman's head acts in a similar manner, except that you have to breath out to it (very close as shown below) and it will give you an answer. If you stink, she tells you ''No way, I can't stand it. How embarrassing!"
(Personal hygiene 'sniffer robots')
Science fiction writers were early predictors of the value of robots with an electronic nose. Like Ray Bradbury's mechanical hound:
Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound...
I also thought of this device from a science fiction movie in 1985 - Runaway, by Michael Crichton. The device is a small, portable "sniffer robot":
(Sniffer Robot from Runaway)
Via LatestTopTechNews.
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