The 3rd World Congress of Digital Olfaction Society was hosted by the Tokyo Institute of Tecnology in Japan the 7-8 December 2016. Distinguished researchers were invited to present and share their views about the digital olfaction in different applications.
The first part of the congress was dedicated to recent scientific advances and perspectives, and focused on the advances of human olfactory interfaces, including sensors, electronic noses and olfactory displays. The application of these devices in health and odor and environmental monitoring was discussed.
Pr. Takamichi Nakamoto, local organizer, presented the recent advances in human olfactory interface, focusing in the latest techniques for data processing and odor sensing modules for the Internet of Things (IoT). Recent advances and prototypes developed in his lab were also presented.
Dr. Marvin Edeas, Chairman of the Digital Olfaction Society made a revision of the human olfactory sense and presented the last findings on olfactory receptors. This receptors can be found not only in the olfactory epithelium but also outside of the olfactory systems, suggesting that they may play an important role in the ectopic expression of non-chemosensory tissues.
Other speakers were Michael Rapp from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany who gave a vision of surface acoustic wave sensors and biosensors and Joel Mainland from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in USA who gave an insight bout receptor representation of odors.
A section of the talks dealt with biomedical applications. Hyung-Gi Byun from the Kangwon National University in South Korea presented their latest experiments in detecting lung cancer using an electronic nose system. Also Dr. Kea-Tiong Tang from the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan presented a paper about the use of a low-voltage low-power nose-on-a-chip for rapid diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia. Last, Dr. Ethab Mohamed from from the University of Alexandria in Egypt discussed about electronic nose-based artificial neural network in urine samples for detecting patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis.
On the odor environmental application side, Hiroshi Ishida from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Engineering in Japan presented some recent applications in mobile robot with odor sensor.
Our research group presented in this section a revision of the latest gas sensor technologies and we introduced our new prototype of wireless e-nose with Bluetooth connection for smartphones.
The following session was focused on Digital Olfaction Displaying and Demonstrations, where issues concerning the use of smell in marketing toward personalized emotional perspective were discussed in detail.
The demonstrations sessions were divided in two parts: Before the practical demonstrations, each team was invited to present orally their technology and the process of demonstration (5-10 minutes by team) and next during the Demonstration Session, each team had a dedicated space to show, demonstrate, explain and discuss about his project. The demonstrations selected were:
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Cocktail maze using wearable olfactory display. Yosuke Maruno, Masaaki Iseki and Takamichi Nakamoto, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
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AROMASTIC, a personal aroma diffuser, changes the way you enjoy scents. Shuji Fujita, Sony Corporation, Japan
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Smelling screen mini: Presenting spatial odor distribution over the touch screen of a tablet computer. Haruka Matsukura, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Engineering, Japan
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The event had also a poster sessions in which different prototypes and systems related with novel olfactory technologies in olfaction and displays were discussed by researchers and attendants.
We all enjoyed a very well organized venue and from here I would like to say thank you to the organizers. Next event will be in 2018. We are looking forward to meet again our colleagues and to expand this field to other people interested in digital olfaction.
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- First World Congress of the Digital Olfaction Society, April 11-12, 2013 – Berlin, Germany
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