High-speed odour sensing using miniaturised electronic nose

TL;DR

This paper presents a miniaturised, high-speed electronic nose capable of classifying odour pulses within milliseconds and encoding stimuli at 60 Hz, matching animal olfaction temporal resolution for robotic applications.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel miniaturised electronic nose with high-bandwidth sensors and algorithms, achieving unprecedented temporal resolution in low-power, compact devices.

Findings

Successful classification of tens-of-millisecond odour pulses

Temporal pattern encoding of stimuli switching at 60 Hz

Exceeds performance of biological olfaction in some aspects

Abstract

Animals have evolved to rapidly detect and recognise brief and intermittent encounters with odour packages, exhibiting recognition capabilities within milliseconds. Artificial olfaction has faced challenges in achieving comparable results -- existing solutions are either slow; or bulky, expensive, and power-intensive -- limiting applicability in real-world scenarios for mobile robotics. Here we introduce a miniaturised high-speed electronic nose; characterised by high-bandwidth sensor readouts, tightly controlled sensing parameters and powerful algorithms. The system is evaluated on a high-fidelity odour delivery benchmark. We showcase successful classification of tens-of-millisecond odour pulses, and demonstrate temporal pattern encoding of stimuli switching with up to 60 Hz. Those timescales are unprecedented in miniaturised low-power settings, and demonstrably exceed the performance observed in mice. For the first time, it is possible to match the temporal resolution of animal olfaction in robotic systems. This will allow for addressing challenges in environmental and industrial monitoring, security, neuroscience, and beyond.