{"id":23634,"date":"2017-03-31T04:42:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T11:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=23634"},"modified":"2017-03-31T13:02:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T20:02:38","slug":"an-artificial-odour-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/03\/31\/an-artificial-odour-test\/","title":{"rendered":"An artificial odour test"},"content":{"rendered":"

(image from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Say someone claims to have developed a system to \u201ccapture\u201d any odour in the form of a digital code \u2013 one that could be transmitted online or uploaded to the internet and faithfully reproduced at the receiving end. How could we be sure that the system is valid? In other words, how can we know that, for any possible odour someone has captured digitally and transmitted, the smell we receive is indeed a recognizable, fair rendition of the original?<\/p>\n

Prof. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute of Science\u2019s computer science and applied mathematics department explains that, as opposed to video and audio, an odour reproduction system is still far from viable, although some of the components already exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still don\u2019t understand the process by which the numerous combinations of odourants in our environment are identified and sensed as a particular smell in our brains after they enter our noses, attach to the several hundred kinds of odour receptors there and are transferred to the brain as signals,\u201d he said. But he and his colleagues had, already 15 years ago, laid out the basic principles of such a digital smell system.<\/p>\n

This system would need a \u201csniffer\u201d \u2013 a sort of artificial nose \u2013 to take \u201csnapshots\u201d of the odourous substances in the air. It would also need a \u201cwhiffer\u201d that, something like a colour printer, would be able to mix a fixed set of around 50 chemical odourants in precisely given proportions \u2013 something in the way a printer mixes a small number of inks \u2013 and release measured amounts of the resulting odour into the air accurately, in a controlled manner.<\/p>\n

\"photo
Prof. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute of Science. (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Harel believes that such systems will eventually exist, pointing out that research is continually improving our understanding of how smell is \u201cencoded\u201d and how we perceive it. Although reasonably good sniffers and whiffers exist, the tantalizing scientific challenge is to work out the algorithm for connecting the sniffer\u2019s reading into the whiffer\u2019s emission; that is, a method is needed for translating any given odour into precise instructions for the whiffer to follow. The output mixtures would have to be experienced by humans in the way that photos are today \u2013 as reproductions that our sense recognizes as faithfully capturing the original.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that this challenge appears to be extremely difficult, Harel recently devised a test that could be used to assess the validity of such a system, if and when one is proposed. One of his inspirations was the Turing test proposed by the British father of computer science, Alan Turing, to test claims of human-like intelligence in a machine. A tester sits in one room and holds conversations with entities in two other rooms \u2013 one a human and the other the candidate computer. Through questions, chitchat and serious discourse, the tester tries to identify which is which; if repeated tests cannot distinguish the computer from the human, it is said to possess artificial intelligence. \u201cThe problem with using such a test for artificial olfaction,\u201d said Harel, \u201cis that such blind comparisons are detached from the element of human recognizability; and there is no adequate language to describe smells in general, meaning verbal discussions would not work either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harel devised a \u201clineup\u201d test, whose key feature is the immersion of odours with their natural audio-visual references, thus eliminating the need for verbal description. A team of neutral testers is given several short video clips \u2013 for example, of a bakery, a zoo, a dusty attic, a flowering meadow, etc. \u2013 and is asked to match an odour emitted by the sniffer with its correct clip. The clips are prepared by a team of challengers, whose role is to try to disprove the claim that the proposed system is valid.<\/p>\n

To make sure that the test is fair \u2013 for example, the subjects won\u2019t be required to identify the odour of a damp cave hidden from view in the clip of a meadow scene \u2013 the group is divided into two. One half is exposed to the actual odours collected and preserved at the video sites, and the other to the artificial, chemically reproduced odour created by the sniffer-whiffer system. That way, the second team of participants \u2013 those smelling the whiffer output \u2013 are required only to correctly match the odour to its clip when the first team \u2013 those exposed to the real odour \u2013 succeeds. As in the Turing test, the artificial is pitted against the natural in a blinded experiment, but here the test uses odour immersion for recognizability, and the test is asymmetric, requiring from the artificial no more than is required from the real thing in order to be declared successful.<\/p>\n

For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(image from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il) Say someone claims to have developed a system to \u201ccapture\u201d any odour in the form of a digital code \u2013 one that could be transmitted online or uploaded to the internet and faithfully reproduced at the receiving end. How could we be sure that the system is valid? In other words, how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[6939,2225,4381],"class_list":["post-23634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-david-harel","tag-science","tag-weizmann-institute"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}