Aryballe, maker of digital odor detectors, is showing off an early production model of its portable NeOse digital smell sensor at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.
The device is intended for the pro market and is priced as such; when it ships in about two months, it will cost about $10 thousand. Company spokesperson Fanny Turlure talked about various commercial scenarios in which the device could be used, including by large consumer packaged good manufacturers for R&D or quality control.
The product works by attracting odor molecules into the device’s chamber where they then interact with chemical sensors. The device lights up the prism with an LED light and the device records optical signal transduction and then analyzes the odor signature and matches it against a database in the cloud.
While the device is clearly priced for the pro market, Aryballe is currently working with “many of the large consumer electronics manufacturers” who want to add additional intelligence to their appliances according to Turlure. While she wouldn’t give an estimated time frame when we might see this type of technology embedded into an appliance, Turlure said the company has been working with appliance makers for about a year.
In October, Aryballe CEO Tristan Rousselle was at the Smart Kitchen Summit and showed off a prototype of the product by using it to detect French cheese (the company is French, after all). You can see a video of the session below: