Novel smartphone app to detect your scent

• Smartphones can detect QR codes, fingerprints, faces, etc.
• A new smartphone app can detect smells too
• The app may be very useful in culinary businesses

Besides scanning a QR code or recognising your face, voice, as well as motion, your smartphone may now soon be able to identify and analyse your scent, via an app that acts like an electronic nose that can detect odours and flavours.

Nanoscent, an Israel-based start-up, is developing a smartphone app that, used together with a chip called a "scent recorder", can determine users' scent profile and help them select products, e.g., cosmetics, perfumes and soaps, best suited for them, timesofisrael.com reported.

"Combining scent with technological innovation is something that hasn't yet been explored or fully realised," Oren Gavriely, co-founder and CEO, was quoted as saying.

Even though our sense of smell strongly impa cts how we think, feel and remember, it is not a part of the existing ecosystem of smartphone devices, which use voice activation, facial recognition, and motion detection to enhance our lives, Gavriely said.

Made up of nanoparticles, the new sensor which is currently separate from the smartphone, emits different signals based on the smell it is exposed to.

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The technology uses the interactions between the sensor and the chemical substances emitted from our body to generate a distinct pattern, or fingerprint, for each scent. It then uses this data to train its algorithm to identify different kinds of smells.

The company is also developing a matchmaking application that can determine people's compatibility based on their scent profiles, the report said. The technology identifies the smells of each individual in the couple, and creates a map of smells that were attractive and best suited to the other.

Then they train their algorithm to detect the various scents, and thus identify potential matches. Both products are expected to be launched this year, Gavriely said. The technology can be applied in smart building applications for the proper maintenance of bathrooms, culinary businesses that want to record smells, automobile companies that want to use scent to influence drivers, and companies interested in enhancing sleep by using scent. IANS