High-speed odor sensing using miniaturized electronic nose | Science Advances

Animals have evolved to rapidly detect and recognize brief and intermittent encounters with odor 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 miniaturized high-speed electronic nose, characterized by high-bandwidth sensor readouts, tightly controlled sensing parameters, and powerful algorithms. The system is evaluated on a high-fidelity odor delivery benchmark. We showcase successful classification of tens-of-millisecond odor pulses and demonstrate temporal pattern encoding of stimuli switching with up to 60 hertz. Those timescales are unprecedented in miniaturized low-power settings and demonstrably exceed the performance observed in mice. It is now 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.