Akademik

n.

A computer chip with sensors that can detect chemicals associated with certain smells.

"Electronic aroma-analyzers have also been used to test the quality of seafood, cheese, meat, coffee, beer, and wine, as well as a 'nose on a chip' that sniffs out gas leaks and pollutants."

— Leander Kahney, "Electronic Nose Smells Illness," Wired, September 29, 1999

A Umist nose, made of 20 smell sensors surrounded by electronics, and measuring about 1ft long, recently outperformed a squad of truffle-sniffing pigs and another of truffle-snuffling dogs during trials in France.

The microchip nose would have both the sensors and the electronics integrated in a fingernail-size piece of silicon.

Dr Krishna Persaud, a Umist lecturer in instrumentation, who is leading the team, says Edinburgh university researchers are helping the project. Last month Edinburgh university announced it had developed a video camera on a microchip, paving the way for cheaper videophones, camcorders, electronic cameras and surveillance equipment. Dr Persaud says a nose on a chip may be achieved in two years.

—Nick Nuttall, "Sniffing around for a life-saverThe Times, February 21, 1991