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The World Cup for robots
I love it: Some engineers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan are developing a device that you can point at a smell to record a sample of it — then “play” it back later on. As the New Scientist reports:
Somboon’s system will use 15 chemical-sensing microchips, or electronic noses, to pick up a broad range of aromas. These are then used to create a digital recipe from a set of 96 chemicals that can be chosen according to the purpose of each individual gadget. When you want to replay a smell, drops from the relevant vials are mixed, heated and vaporised. In tests so far, the system has successfully recorded and reproduced the smell of orange, lemon, apple, banana and melon. “We can even tell a green apple from a red apple,” Somboon says.
This thing might actually work. The lab’s web site is down, but Google’s cached copy of their experiment page shows that they do seem to be having some success with “recording and reproducing citrus flavors”.
Nonetheless, I can’t stop giggling. There is no technology more justly mocked than Smell-O-Vision. Yet in a weird may, maybe there’s actually a use for an olfactory iPod. Smell is powerfully related to memory, so one might wonder whether this device could actually be useful as a memory aid: When you’re trying to remember the details of a situation, you record its smell, and then play it back later as a cognitive priming device.
Then again, when smells are removed from their context they can be kind of creepy. I recently visited a lab where they develop artificial flavors — extracting the essence of the flavor and smell of, say, buttered popcorn, or bacon, or a hamburger. And let me tell you, when you hold up a tiny stick with a dab of hamburger scent on it and your nose is overwhelmed by the smell of an actual, real burger, it’s strangely unsettling: It feels less like the wonderful odor of a burger joint and more like you’re experiencing a psychotic break.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
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