In our homes and in our pockets, there are electronics that can hear, see, and sense our touch. Your smartphone probably does all three. What’s missing: technology that can smell. But this may be changing, as detailed on the latest episode of Unexplainable, Vox’s weekly podcast exploring unanswered questions in science.
The technology to make smartphones that smell is nearing reality, says Andreas Mershin, a research scientist and inventor at MIT. “I think we’re maybe five years away, maybe a little bit less,” he says, “to get it from where it is now to fully inside of a phone. And I’m talking [about deploying it] into a hundred million phones.”
The idea isn’t necessarily to have Siri tell you when you need a shower (though, that could be helpful for some people). There’s a bigger public-health mission: Replicate the incredible disease detection capabilities of dogs in a more portable, accessible form to help flag insidious illnesses early on.
