Computers learn to smell and taste

Abstract: They all stink: food and drink, perfumery, household products, soaps, shampoos, paints, manufacturing processes, printing processes, waste products, contaminated air, and automotive emissions and environmental testing. In every case, small is a criterion of quality.

Automated techniques to ‘smell’ or ‘taste’ liquids using mass spectrometry and gas chromatography are time consuming, require skilled personnel and often do not give the information required for qualitative ‘testing’. A new technique is now available due to the advances in neural computing technology and multi-sensor array technology. The combination of these two approaches tries to simulate the human olfactory system in a simplified form. This paper shows that the recognition ability of an odour sensor array will be significantly improved using a neural computing approach in order to discriminate between similar odours.