Connect with us

News

Engineers develop bio-machine nose that can “sniff” and classify odors

Published

8 years ago

on

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.

Advertisement

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?

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement
Related Topics:

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla responds to Robotaxi skeptics with a massive move in Austin

Published

2 hours ago

on

June 3, 2026

By

Credit: @AdanGuajardo/X

Tesla has responded to the skeptics of its Robotaxi program by launching a massive expansion of the unsupervised program in its initial rollout city of Austin.

The company’s geofence, the enabled area of operation for rides, now covers the entire Austin Metropolitan area, an incredible move just days after media headlines attempted to discredit the ride-hailing service.

Those who have access to the Tesla Robotaxi app on their smartphones can now request a ride in any portion of the Austin Metro area. The company confirmed this on the social media platform X:

This is Tesla’s fifth expansion of the geofence, with the others occurring in July, early August, late August, and late October 2025. It has remained at that size since October 26, but Tesla has now more than doubled that size.

It is now covering the entire area, including suburbs like Pflugerville and Manor, as well as I-35 highways, Gigafactory Texas, and the Austin-Bergstrom Airport.

The move comes just days after various media outlets highlighted the small fleet size of Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet in Austin, something that is a reasonable criticism but an understandable move on the company’s part to prioritize safety.

Advertisement

Tesla expands Robotaxi geofence, but not the garage

Tesla has expanded its Robotaxi geofence many times, but its fleet has remained at a relatively conservative size as the company continues to push safety as its most crucial metric.

The latest expansion is a key indicator of Tesla’s comfort level to expand the ride-hailing service. The move shows Tesla is scaling unsupervised autonomy, as it demonstrates that the company’s Full Self-Driving system has reached sufficient reliability for a broader real-world deployment, which is something the company has worked on extensively.

It also shows Tesla is game for a competition with its rivals in the autonomous ride-hailing sector. Tesla has often matched or exceeded competitors like Waymo in coverage area, despite its smaller fleet. This step highlights Tesla’s iterative, data-driven progress toward a high-margin, app-based Robotaxi network.

Advertisement

It’s not the absolute largest area expansion ever, but achieving full unsupervised operations across a major metro is a key moment in the Robotaxi story. It shifts the program from limited pilot/testing toward a more mature commercial service, while gathering the miles needed for faster growth.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla improves Dashcam playback with awesome addition

Published

21 hours ago

on

June 2, 2026

By

Image Credit: The Kilowatts/Twitter

Tesla has improved Dashcam playback with an awesome new addition, as the company has launched a web-based version that is potentially easier to navigate and operate.

The tool is available at dashcam.tesla.com and will be enabled as your vehicle receives the 2026.20 Software Version. Clips that are captured by your Tesla will be available on the Online Dashcam Clip Viewer once the files on your car’s storage drive are encrypted.

Not a Tesla App first noticed the new feature, and states that once your Tesla updates to 2026.20, the car will automatically protect the clips with an encryption key that is uniquely tied to your owner account.

The web-based viewer should be easier to operate for most. All you will do is head over to dashcam.tesla.com and log in using your account credentials.

Ensure your vehicle is updated to 2026.20 in order for the web-based viewer tool to fetch your vehicle’s saved dashcam clips.

Currently, only a small percentage of owners are updated to this, so it may be a couple of weeks until a majority of owners in the fleet are able to access this feature.

Advertisement

Watching Dashcam clips on the Tesla smartphone app is quick and convenient, as they can also be easily downloaded and stored right on your smartphone.

However, the clips are sometimes tougher to navigate, and in order to get details like self-driving activation, speed, and turn signals, owners have to screen record the Tesla app and crop out the rest of the screen.

It could also be a massive storage saver as you’ll be able to download the Dashcam clips from the online viewer and save them to your laptop, desktop, a flash drive, or even an external hard drive. This will keep all your clips in one place.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Tesla Full Self-Driving attempts 150-mile stress test: the good and the bad

Published

24 hours ago

on

June 2, 2026

By

Credit: TESLARATI

I recently took my Tesla Model Y running Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.3.3 over 150 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in an effort to truly put the system under a stress test. There were a lot of good moments, and some bad, but overall, Full Self-Driving impressed me.

Last Thursday, I decided it was time to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, PA. I go a few times a year, and it was a beautiful day. Others have taken some pretty lengthy drives using FSD, but I haven’t had the opportunity to really do something lengthy in quite a few months on an older version. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to try some things out.

I recorded the entire ride there on a GoPro, edited to highlight the crucial moments, and shared them on our social media accounts. If you want to watch them, I’ll share them throughout the piece, but I did not get to do a real breakdown of what I felt about its performance.

Overall Thoughts

I realize it is probably better to do a summation of its performance toward the end of the piece, but I feel like it is also reasonable to lead with this because I was overly impressed with how well it handled everything. The only moments where I felt a little bit of reason to touch the wheel, at least while traveling on the Turnpike and Rt. 30, were due to other drivers and their behaviors.

Advertisement

I have taken many drives to the Memorial over the past several years, and although it’s not incredibly long, it is a tiring drive. It’s about five hours both ways, close to 300 miles, and I think most of the exhaustion comes from the toll of sitting in the car and then visiting something that is pretty heavy to take in.

This was the first time I’ve ever taken the ride and not felt like I needed to avoid my vehicle after I got home. In the past, I could not even think about driving after I finally arrived at my house, but this was simply different.

It was nice to have something else take the drive for me, while I still had the freedom to take over if I chose to. It made the entire trip more enjoyable.

Full Self-Driving Recognizes Lane-Ending Arrows on Road

After traveling in the fast lane for a little while, FSD noticed the arrows on the road indicating the lane was coming to an end ahead. The car was also in the process of making a pass on a slower vehicle in the middle lane, but aborted this maneuver and backed off to get behind the vehicle.

Advertisement

I was really impressed by this because I thought that the car would absolutely try to make the pass, only to get in front of the other car, and then slow back down to 75 MPH:

Full Self-Driving Notices Veering Tractor Trailer, Adjusts Lane Positioning

My two rules of the road are never cruise in the fast lane and never drive next to a tractor-trailer. This clip is a perfect example as to why.

Advertisement

FSD v14.3.3 recognized this tractor-trailer attempting to change lanes while we were still next to it. The car shifted its lane positioning to the shoulder slightly to make room for the merging semi, executed the pass safely, and on we went.

I will admit this one made me a little nervous, but more so because of the 18-wheeler, and not because of the Tesla:

Advertisement

Full Self-Driving Follows the Rules of Tunnel Travel

Many people who are not familiar with Full Self-Driving and its capabilities are pretty limited in what they know about the really simple things it does well. Part of supervising FSD is being aware of things it might make mistakes with, and anticipating maneuvers it might want to make at the wrong time.

Entering the Blue Mountain Tunnel on the Turnpike, I was ready for FSD to attempt to get back into the right lane after making a pass on a tractor-trailer, but I was pleasantly surprised. Several signs outside the tunnel advise drivers to stay in the lane they’ve chosen while driving through the tunnel; this eliminates the possibility of an accident caused by lane changes, which would impede traffic on a crucial logistics route.

I was happy to see that Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.3 did not make this mistake:

Full Self-Driving Navigates Toll Plazas with Ease

I was interested to see how FSD would handle toll plazas, including the speed at which it would travel through them, and whether it would stop on the Turnpike at these booths, which have since been transitioned to a “Toll by Plate” system, which mails you a bill.

It was flawless:

Full Self-Driving Still Struggles with Parking from Time to Time

Since I took delivery in late August, I’ve never had a single instance of my Tesla struggling to park at a Supercharger. Other spots at the mall, market, or gym are another story.

This was the first time it did such a terrible job of backing into a spot. This required me to take over and manually park at another charger:

Full Self-Driving Gets Confused After Arriving at Its Destination

This was the first time I have ever experienced FSD getting confused and just circling the lot. The navigation continued to reroute to try to resolve the issue, but after four laps, I decided it was time to overtake the car’s controls and park manually:

This was a baffling behavior that I truly couldn’t explain. Other owners communicated that they have also experienced this issue.

Final Thoughts

I am so incredibly impressed by FSD that it has really made traveling stress-free. The two issues related to parking were not ideal, but to be fair, I usually take over when arriving at parking lots. However, this shortcoming is something Tesla has to make some serious progress with, because parking has truly stumped FSD at times.

Advertisement

Solving that will be a major breakthrough for autonomy, but Tesla has struggled with it for some time.

All in all, FSD v14.3.3 is unbelievably accurate and handles many of the more stressful maneuvers with ease, one of them being avoiding merging traffic on highways, which was shown above.

Some things that would be great to see improvements on are parking, Speed Profiles, which are relatively tough to adjust (I stayed in Standard for the duration of this drive), and, of course, navigation.

Advertisement
Continue Reading