The Odor Recorder. It may not look like much now, but this machine is probably the first smell recorder in the world. Now close your eyes and imagine a world where we routinely transmit smells from place to place. Where restaurants can send you the smell of their menu while you’re ordering a take-out online. The trick apparently lies in digitizing the components of the smell and recreating them at the other end.
The principle of the odor recorder peroformance is as follows. First, the target flavor is measured using array of Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensors. Then, the sensor array is exposed to the mixture of several components blended using an odor blender. The array output pattern for the mixture is compared with the one for the target flavor. Subsequently, the quantitative composition (odor recipe) of the mixture is iteratively adjusted so that the difference between the two patterns can be minimized.
This is really great. I am curious what advancements have happened in the smell reproduction side. The consumer on the internet needs a device (like a odor printer) to reproduce the smell from the digital image being sent along with a menu.