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Engineers develop bio-machine nose that can “sniff” and classify odors
Engineers from Brown University in Rhode Island have invented a small, low-cost sensor device which is able to classify odors using input from a mimicked “sniffing” action. It’s called TruffleBot, and it’s here to raise the bar on electronic “noses”. It also works with Raspberry Pi, an inexpensive mini-computer popular with electronics hobbyists, students, and others in the “maker” crowd.
Generally, an electronic nose is a device comprising several chemical sensors whose results are fed through a pattern-recognition system to identify odors. In traditional devices, the chemical responses alone are used for classification. The engineers behind this invention, however, decided to incorporate non-chemical data to account for the mechanics of the smell process used in nature for a better result. Their experiment proved successful with an approximate 95-98% rate of accuracy in identification compared to about 80-90% accuracy with the chemical sensors alone.
According to the inventors’ published paper, the guiding knowledge that made TruffleBot so useful in odor detection was this: Different smells have different impacts on the air around them, and measuring the variations enables more accurate identification. Did you know that beer odor decreases air pressure and increases temperature? The changes are slight, but TruffleBot can sense them.
This is where the “sniffing” comes in. The device uses air pumped through four obstructed pathways before sending it through chemical and non-chemical sensors. Odors impact the air surrounding them, and the movement of the air through obstacles (“sniffing”) enables the odors’ impact to be more accurately measured.
A chart detailing how TruffleBot processes odors. | Credit: Brown University
So, where exactly would one need an electronic nose? Everywhere. Devices with the chemical sensing ability are being used in agriculture, military, and commercial applications to identify all sorts environmental data. Essentially, electronic noses are useful in any industrial application that has odor involved.
Nasal Marketing
Did you know that it’s possible to trademark a smell in the United States? It’s not easy to accomplish given the somewhat difficult requirements to meet, but a few such things exist. The fact that Play-Doh, a product whose smell is probably one of its most distinct features, was granted a trademark for the scent only this year is testament to the difficulty of obtaining such a mark. However, the fact that some companies have found enough incentive to make sure only their company can give your nose a particular chemical experience tells a lot about that sense’s importance from a marketing perspective.
On one hand, utilizing smell in marketing might seem a little manipulative. After all, creating an air freshener that reminds someone of a beloved, deceased relative on purpose might not seem like a particularly ethical way to target their money. On the other hand (or bigger picture), however, the motivation for marketers to use scent as a tool involves a sort of “chicken or the egg” question.
To summarize part of an article in the journal Sensors on the role scent plays in society and commerce, the aroma of products has a direct impact on their appeal to customers and thus, the success of the product. In fact, a change in a product’s formula that impacts its smell can, and often has had, devastating sales results. In other words, it’s not enough for a company to create a good product; it has to be a good smelling product.
Hacking the Human Nose
It’s probably no surprise that the commercial industry has categorized consumer preferences when it comes to smells. As the first sense fully developed after birth, our noses link us to things like memories, emotions, and chemical communication (think pheromones). Is it any wonder, then, why businesses might be interested in the functionality of the organ that is doing the receiving?
Turns out, there’s an enormous amount of science behind “hacking” a nose. Identifying smells is more than just categorizing chemical mixtures as “floral” or “masculine”. The multitude of chemical combinations available generates such a vast amount of data that scientists have implemented computer neural networks to analyze and classify it. Also, the actual mechanics of smelling something impacts the way the smell is received and processed in the brain. Computers and scientific instruments come in handy there as well. To really get to the core of human response to an aroma, lots of non-human tools are needed, and this is essentially where the TruffleBot fits in the greater realm of “olfactory” science.
I think this is a Sumerian variant for “fruity”. | Credit: AstroJane’s bathroom collection.
More Than Just Your Money
Perhaps one of the most innovative uses found for electronic noses is in disease research. One of the limitations of human smell is its overall weakness. A dog’s sense of smell is around 40 times better than a human’s, and a bear’s is a whopping 2,100 times superior to ours. That said, when researchers learned that certain diseases give off certain odors, the human nose wasn’t exactly the first choice to utilize in sensing them.
An electronic nose makes good use of the simple fact that organic matter releases chemicals into the air. For example, when a plant has been impacted by a fungus, the changes brought on in the plant’s structure release what’s called “volatile organic compounds” (VOCs). These VOCs can be detected by the sensors in an electronic nose and then provide information on the type of disease present without destroying the plants being tested.
Humans have some amazing things to gain from electronic noses, too. Using sensors to process odors from VOCs, things like digestive diseases, kidney diseases, and diabetes, among many others, are all receiving scientific attention for non-invasive diagnosis by these types of devices. With improvements brought on by inventions like TruffleBot, especially combined with its low-cost and resulting accessibility, a future involving remote diagnoses for any number of illnesses and diseases seems more possible every day.
Elon Musk
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
Tesla has begun building production quality Optimus robots in Fremont and revealed its training plan.
Tesla has started building Optimus on the high volume line it set up inside its Fremont factory, and the company says the robots coming off it are the first that meet the bar for a real product. “The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured,” Tesla wrote in its third quarter shareholder letter, adding that it has “proven that the current manufacturing process for Optimus is suitable for a commercial product.”
The line sits in space that built the Model S and Model X until this spring. Tesla cleared the old vehicle line in 46 days, as Teslarati reported in July, to make room for robot production sized for one million units a year. On Wednesday’s earnings call, Elon Musk said most of the equipment for that capacity is already in Fremont, with output set to climb toward roughly 20,000 robots a week as the line ramps.
Musk described the ramp as a classic S curve. “The growth of Optimus is an S curve, but the initial curve is a shallow slope,” he said. The team is now refining the robot’s AI, electromechanical design, reliability and service life, and Musk expects that work to be finished by the end of next year, when Tesla plans to start delivering Optimus to outside companies for dangerous, repetitive and around the clock jobs.
The most interesting part of the call was how Tesla plans to teach the robots. Its cars send real driving data back to the AI team from millions of vehicles, but Optimus has no fleet like that yet. “A big difference with Optimus versus the cars is we don’t have this vast fleet of cars from which we can gather training data,” Musk said. Tesla’s answer is an Optimus Academy, where 10,000 to 20,000 robots will practice a wide range of tasks and feed what they learn into the next version of the model. Every unit off the Fremont line becomes a source of that training data.
Smarter hardware is on the way too. Tesla plans to put its AI5 chip into Optimus next year, and Musk said a new Optimus video should arrive within one or two months showing the robot completing tasks driven by AI rather than preprogrammed motions. He took aim at rival humanoid demos that only run scripted routines, saying those would not hold up in the real world.
The supply chain is lining up behind the program. In September, Tesla certified Tuopu, Joyson and Sanhua as mass production partners for Optimus components. A far larger Optimus factory is also rising at Giga Texas, where drone footage from Joe Tegtmeyer showed the steel frame nearing completion, and Musk has pegged that plant’s long term target at 10 million robots a year.
Tesla executives also said Optimus production costs are trending toward the expected manufacturing cost of Cybercab, a sign the robot is being engineered for volume from the start. The hands remain the toughest piece of the design, a point Musk also made at the X Takeover event earlier this month, as Teslarati covered at the time, and that is where much of the current engineering effort is focused.
Elon Musk
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
Musk disputes NASA estimate of 22 Starship launches for Moon landing, predicting 6 to 8.
Elon Musk is disputing a new NASA safety panel estimate of how many Starship launches it will take to put astronauts on the Moon, saying the real number will be less than half the panel’s figure.
On Thursday, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its quarterly public meeting. Panel member Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut, flagged the fueling process for SpaceX’s lunar lander as a major risk for Artemis IV, the mission planned to land a crew on the Moon in 2028. “We need to keep our eyes on numerous required fuelings for the lander,” Precourt said, according to Ars Technica. “I think the last estimate is around 22 flights.”
Ars Technica’s Eric Berger posted the comment on X, and Musk replied. “That’s way too high,” Musk wrote. “Actual number will be more like 6 to 8.”
The disagreement comes down to a basic problem with sending a ship as large as Starship to the Moon. Starship burns nearly all of its propellant just reaching Earth orbit, so it cannot continue on to the Moon without stopping for a refill. SpaceX’s answer is a gas station in space. First, a Starship that works as a storage tank, called a depot, is launched into orbit. Then a series of tanker Starships launch one at a time, dock with the depot and pump their leftover propellant into it. Once the depot is full, the lunar lander version of Starship launches, docks, fills up and heads for the Moon.
Every tanker trip is its own full rocket launch, which is why the count matters. More launches mean more time, more cost and more chances for something to go wrong before astronauts ever leave Earth. Berger estimated that even if SpaceX reaches twice weekly Starship launches by the end of 2027, filling a depot at the panel’s number would still take roughly three months.
How many tankers are needed depends mostly on how much propellant each one can carry to orbit and how much is lost along the way. Starship’s fuel and oxygen are stored at extremely cold temperatures, and some of it slowly boils off while waiting in orbit. More is lost in each transfer. NASA appears to be working from what Starship can lift today, while Musk’s range assumes a more capable rocket.
Musk has pushed back on higher counts before. In 2021, after a government document suggested 16 launches, he called that “extremely unlikely” and said eight tankers would be the most required.
Much of the answer depends on hardware SpaceX has not finished flying. As Teslarati noted earlier this year, the company plans to carry out the refueling process with its upgraded V3 Starship, and Precourt described Artemis IV as carrying “a large number of firsts.” He also praised NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s team for working to clear obstacles for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, whose Blue Moon lander does not rely on orbital refueling for its first mission.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s secretive “Project Crystal Sun” gets a big green light in Texas
Fort Bend County approved four incentive agreements Thursday for Tesla’s proposed $10.1 billion solar factory.
Fort Bend County commissioners on Thursday approved a package of tax incentives for Tesla’s proposed $10.1 billion solar cell factory near Needville, Texas, giving the company one of the last local approvals it needs before it decides where to build. All four Tesla agreements passed 4 to 0.
The votes covered a property tax abatement inside Reinvestment Zone No. 34, a Chapter 381 economic development agreement, a foreign trade zone non-objection paired with payments in lieu of certain taxes, and a separate payment in lieu of taxes “true up” agreement, according to agenda notes from the Fort Bend Commissioners Court meeting.
The project, known internally as “Project Crystal Sun,” would make solar cells and finished modules on roughly 3,000 acres near FM 762 and FM 1994, south of the Brazos River. As Teslarati reported when the filing first surfaced in August, Tesla’s application under the state’s JETI Act splits the investment into $1.5 billion in real property and $8.6 billion in equipment, with 9,712 permanent jobs projected by 2033 and commercial operations targeted for the first quarter of 2029. The plant would handle the full chain from ingot and wafer production through cell testing.
Inside Tesla’s secretive $10 Billion “Project Crystal Sun” filing
Thursday’s approval does not lock in the site. Tesla has told the Texas Comptroller it is still weighing other locations, and site selection adviser David Dennison told Lamar Consolidated ISD trustees in September that the race had narrowed to Fort Bend and one out of state rival with a “very compelling package,” according to the Houston Chronicle. Tesla hopes to decide before the end of 2026, and the incentives still need sign off from the Comptroller and the Governor’s office.
Local officials have now done nearly everything within their control. Commissioners created the reinvestment zone in an August 24 special meeting, with Interim County Judge Daniel Wong formally withdrawing himself over his engineering firm’s past work with Tesla. Lamar CISD trustees voted 7 to 0 on September 15 to advance a JETI agreement that would tax Tesla’s qualifying property at 50 percent of its value for maintenance and operations from 2029 through 2038.
The plant lines up with a target Elon Musk set on Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call in January, when he said the company would “work toward getting 100 GW a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.” In March, Tesla was reported to be negotiating a $2.9 billion purchase of Chinese solar manufacturing equipment bound for Texas. The Houston area already hosts Tesla’s Megafactory in Brookshire, where Megapack 3 production has started. Tesla said on its Q3 call that Megapack supply for 2027 is nearly sold out, and Musk wrote on X Thursday that the company is “increasing production of Megapacks as much as possible,” as demand from data centers climbs.
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
