The electronic nose worked almost as well as human noses, according to the team in charge of the design of this “sniffing drone.”
A team of Spanish scientists has designed, with the help of artificial intelligence, a portable electronic nose (e-nose) to sniff out the smell of sewage treatment plants.
Together with a drone, the lightly e-nose It is capable of measuring the concentration of different odors, predicting their intensity and developing a map of these in real time for their management; the method is published in the journal iScience.
Its managers are researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia, who for their development collected air bags from a plant and trained the electronic nose to smell intense chemicals.
Among them, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and sulfur dioxide, which smell like rotten eggs, urine and burned matches, respectively, says a statement from the Cell group, editor of the journal that publishes the work.
The e-nose it is also equipped with a carbon dioxide sensor, an indicator of bacterial activity.
In the laboratory, the electronic nose worked almost as well as human nosesAccording to those responsible, they remember that the complicated thing about measuring odors is that it is a human perception and it is not well defined.
Measurements very similar to a human assessment
To test this innovation, the researchers coupled the e-nose of 1.3 kilos to a drone and sent it to the sky of a medium-sized wastewater treatment plant in southern Spain.
Flying over different facilities of the plant, the “sniffing drone” sucked the air through a ten-meter tube and analyzed it in a sensor chamber. When analyzing the same air samples in a field test, 10 of the 13 measurements of the e-nose coincided with the evaluations of the human panel.
With the help of the drone’s mobility and the artificial intelligence algorithm, the team also plotted the temporal and spatial concentration of odors, and predicted the intensity of the odor.
“We are very happy with the results, but we need more validation and make the device more robust,” says Santiago Marco, the lead author of the study.
The team plans to reduce the weight of the e-nose and develop a standardized process for the method. Also, further optimize the device against the influence of temperature, humidity and other environmental conditions that can affect accuracy.
“The work can also have implications for other facilities such as landfills, composting plants or even large farms with cattle and pigs that are also known to produce all kinds of bad smells,” says Marco.
“The impact on the quality of life of the people around these facilities should not be underestimated” due to being exposed to bad odors, concludes the researcher. (I)
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