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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

aryballe

Aryballe Launches New NeOse Advance, Digital “Smelling” Device

Digital olfaction company Aryballe announced today the launch of its new NeOse Advance hardware device and Aryballe Suite software. NeOse Advance is the company’s first product derived frorm its silicon photonics-based platform, which detects, records and recognizes smells.

Aryballe’s device works by attracting odor molecules emitted by different products and “smelling” them by analyzing peptides with chemical sensors and spectroscopy. It then creates a unique digital signature for each item, so bananas will have a specific odor signature while coffee will have another. The NeOse then records and creates a catalog of all these digital signatures in a database and uses them to help authenticate other items it encounters.

In the food world, the NeOse technology could have a number of applications. It can be used by food manufacturers to ensure consistency in production. Or it could assist with the verification of ingredients — for example, whether the vanilla or cocoa beans companies paid for are indeed the real thing. Another application the NeOse is currently being used for is to detect mold in grain storage.

In addition to the new NeOse Advance, Aryballe also launched the Aryballe Suite, which is the company’s first cloud-enabled software platform. With Aryballe Suite, users can access and customize odor data analysis for help with R&D projects and product consistency.

There are actually a few players in the digital smelling space. Aromyx uses AI to help analyze different odors. And Koniku uses protein molecules to detect different compounds that objects emit.

Aryballe will start delivering the NeOse Advance in June of this year. The company will sell the product directly, though it did not disclose pricing.

Aryballe Raises €7M for its Digital Nose Technology

Aryballe, which makes a “digital nose” capable of identifying smells, announced today that it has raised €7 million ($7.89M USD) in new funding. The round featured new investors Samsung Venture Investment Corp. and Seb Alliance as well as existing INNOVACOM, CEMAG INVEST, Asahi Kasei, and HCVC. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Aryballe to €17 million ($19.24M USD).

Aryballe debuted its new, miniaturized “nose” sensor earlier this year. The sensor can be built into a range of hardware products. As we wrote then:

The new sensor is smaller than a paperclip and is equipped with Aryballe’s proprietary combination of biosensors, which capture odors in seconds. Aryballe’s software then matches the signals captured with a database of previously collected and analyzed odors to mimic the human sense of smell.

There are a lot of industrial applications for digital smelling technology. Specifically as it relates to food, Aryballe’s nose could be installed in an oven to “smell” when food is burning, or it could be placed in a fridge to let you know if food is going bad. Aryballe’s tech could also be used in coffee roasting, or to help verify the authenticity of raw ingredients like vanilla.

Aryballe also makes the standalone, handheld NeOse Pro device that can also be used for odor analysis.

Aryballe isn’t the only company making a digital nose. Stratuscent‘s eNose is based on NASA patents and was on display at CES earlier this year.

With its new funding, Aryballe said that it will double the company’s current headcount across engineering and product positions and scale up the industrialization of its technology.

Aryballe Announces New Digital Nose Sensor

Aryballe, the French startup that makes a “digital nose,” today announced a new version of its odor detection sensor. The company claims the new sensor is high-volume, lower cost and small enough to be built into consumer appliances.

The new sensor is smaller than a paperclip and is equipped with Aryballe’s proprietary combination of biosensors, which capture odors in seconds. Aryballe’s software then matches the signals captured with a database of previously collected and analyzed odors to mimic the human sense of smell.

Use cases for Aryballe’s digital nose in the kitchen include the ability for an oven to “smell” when food is about to burn and automatically shut off, or in your fridge to notify you when food is spoiling or at peak ripeness. Taking it one step further, the fridge could then automatically add food you need to replace to a grocery shopping list.

Aryballe debuted its handheld, standalone NeOse Pro device at CES back in 2018. In July of last year the company raised a €6.2 million Series B round led by International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), and at that time the company said miniaturization for consumer devices was on its roadmap for 2020.

In today’s press announcement, Aryballe said that its new sensor will be shown at CES this week, and available later this year with the first samples shipping in Q2.

Aryballe isn’t the only digital nose on display at CES this year. Stratuscent‘s eNose, which uses chemical sensors, artificial intelligence and is based on NASA patents, will be demonstrated at the show as well.

Aryballe Raises €6.2 Million for its Digital Nose

Aryballe, the French “digital olfaction” startup that builds a device that essentially mimics the smelling power of the human nose, announced today that it has raised a €6.2 Million ($7M USD) Series B round of funding led by International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) with participation from Hyundai Motor Company. This brings the total amount raised by Aryballe to €9.3 ($10.43M USD).

Aryballe debuted its NeOse Pro, a handheld device aimed at the B2B market that can be used to detect and identify odors, at CES in 2018. As Mike Wolf wrote last year:

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.

In addition to the investment dollars, establishing the formal relationship with IFF’s massive database of fragrances will help augment Aryballe’s odor identification capabilities, and give IFF access to another application it can provide to its clients.

Applications for Aryballe’s technology include maintaining product consistency for something like coffee roasting — making sure each batch roasted smells the same, or ensuring authenticity of raw materials — or determining whether the vanilla a food maker received is artificial or natural.

Additionally, Aryballe is already talking with appliance manufacturers to place its digital olfaction into things like smart refrigerators and ovens. An embedded e-nose in these appliances could help detect food transformation, so your fridge would be able to smell when an item starts to spoil, or an oven could better know when something is done or burning. The company says we should start to see those Aryballe-enabled devices appear in 2020.

With the new money, Aryballe is looking to miniaturize its technology even further, perhaps embedding its technology into even smaller devices like food storage containers so they can give you a better sense of when your leftovers or fruits are going bad.

Aryballe is among a wave of companies looking to digitize our senses. Computer vision is used extensively in things like cashierless checkout in stores to see what we buy (and charge us automatically). Over this past weekend, IBM unveiled its Hypertaste platform to identify and classify liquids. Heck, Amazon has even applied for patents for its own refrigerator that smells.

While Aryballe is smaller than most of these other players, the relationship with IFF and its accompanying dataset, along with an actual working product, means it could lead the pack by more than an e-nose.

The CES Foodtech & Smart Kitchen Trends Wrapup

Every year upon returning from my annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas, someone always asks me, “what was the big thing at CES this year?”

And this year, just like every year, I struggle to answer the question.

The reason? Because there’s never just one big thing. There are usually many big things.

This is in part because it’s such a massive show, one that’s gotten bigger both in scope and attendance over the years, and it’s hard to easily summarize the trends from nearly every corner of tech. Whether your thing is AI, IoT, VR/AR, cryptocurrencies, robotics, CES had something to make you happy.

Because of the overwhelming amount of news and stuff to see, it’s helpful to go to CES with a focus. For me, this year (and really, the last couple years) that focus was kitchen and food tech.  And because there’s no concentrated area at CES for food or kitchen tech (get with the program, CTA), that means I am usually scanning a bunch of different spaces (smart home, fitness, startups) to find interesting new companies or news.

This post is a wrapup of some of the important trends I saw. If I missed anything big (and I’m sure I did), email me, and I’ll update the post.

Smart Kitchen Platforms Emerge

This year was a coming out for connected kitchen platforms at CES. Whether it was Whirlpool’s big debut of Yummly 2.0 (which Brett Dibkey described to me as “the glue” tying together Whirlpool’s kitchen of the future), or offerings powered by Innit, SideChef or Drop, there’s no doubt we saw the intelligent, conscious kitchen undeniably emerge as a major focus for large appliance makers.

What do I mean? Basically, it’s moving beyond simple connectivity and apps to platforms that connect the cooking, storage, commerce, planning and every other aspect of the kitchen into a holistic system. A kitchen that is aware of the food inside the fridge, one where appliances coordinate to each other to help organize the evening or week’s meal, one in which a variety of intelligent sensors and interfaces make your life easier; it was all there. This is, obviously, a big focus for us here at the Spoon, so expect more on this topic later.

Voice Interfaces Everywhere

Speaking of interfaces, we’re on the third year of “Alexa sure seems like it’s everywhere” at CES, but the first year of “Google finally seems to be taking this seriously”. It was just over a year ago that Google finally introduced its development kits for actions for Google Assistant (its answer to Alexa Skills), and twelve months later we finally see the fruits of the company’s labor. We also saw massive investment in CES as Hey Google was plastered all over Vegas, and they had a particular focus on the kitchen with on-site demos of the kitchen with partners like Innit.

Digital Sensing

Part of the intelligent, conscious kitchen is one that understands the food that is in the fridge and on the plate. Some companies were showing off food image recognition tech, infrared spectrometry, digital noses and water sensors.  Companies like Aryballe showed off their high-end professional sensor but also indicated they were working with appliance makers to build the technology into appliances. After-market players like Smarter were demoing their products to companies like Whirlpool. Expect the concept of a sensing kitchen to become more prevalent this year.

Food Inventory Management

Food waste is a big issue everywhere, and there were companies at CES showing off solutions to help us all better track what food we buy.  Startup Ovie, which I would describe as “Tile for food” was showing off its food tracking/management system, while others like Whirlpool and Samsung were talking about how their fridges can help to manage food inventory.

Water Intelligence

Given that it’s one of the world’s most precious resources, it’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why there hasn’t been more attention paid to using IoT and smart technology to manage our water better.  Mystery solved because now it seems the tech world is paying attention. Belkin finally had a coming out party for its long-gestating Phyn water management system while others like Flo had their home water management system on display. Smaller efforts like that of Lishtot, which help us detect whether water is drinkable, were also on display.

Wireless Power

One of the coolest things about the Smart Kitchen Summit last year was the Wireless Power Consortium had its first public demo of its cordless kitchen technology, which features wireless power for small countertop appliances.  I got an early demo at the WPC booth this year as they showed off wireless power for small appliances from Philips and Haier.

I also saw a cool demo using infrared wireless power form Wi-Charge. The concept here is to put an infrared transmitter in the ceiling (they put it in a light installation in the demo) and then transmit power using infrared to various devices. The Wi-Charge folks said their patented tech is currently only targeted at small portable devices, but I’m intrigued with the possibilities for the kitchen as a potential future opportunity.

Specialized Living

I’ve been writing about the massive opportunity for smart home and kitchen innovation for the aging in place market for the past couple years, so I was happy to see a number of companies focusing on this important area.  Much of the focus was on safety, which obviously applies to kitchen/cooking scenarios, but I can also see how smart assistants, robotics and augmented reality could be applied in living scenarios to help folks with limitations due to age.

Robot Invasion

Robots and process automation were everywhere at CES, ranging from cute social robots like LG’s Cloi to delivery robots to the laundry folding robots. Some, like LG, saw the robot as a natural pairing with the kitchen, while others saw robots as more general purpose assistants for the home.  And while we didn’t see the robot chef at CES this year, I expect we’ll see that probably in the near future.

Humanless Retail

AI-driven point of sale devices and “humanless” markets were big at CES. AIPoly won best of show for the second year in a row, while a Bodega-on-wheels startup Robomart had a huge crowd at its booth for much of the show. More modest efforts like the Qvie were on offer to give Airbnb hosts a way to become even more like micro-hotel operators.

New Cooking Boxes Appliances

One of my predictions for the year was a new generation of cooking boxes. I use the term box because they’re not always ovens (though they can be), but often are like the NXP RF-powered smart defroster. We also saw Hestan on the other side of the country (at KBIS) talk about using precision cooking coupled with gas, a throwback to their Meld days.  There were also lots of folks I met with still operating in stealth that plan to debut their next-gen cooking appliances this year, so stay tuned.

Home As Food Factory

All of a sudden, everyone seems to be interested in home-grow systems, whether it’s the backyard IoT grow box from Grow to the Opcom’s grow walls, there was lots of interesting new home grow systems to see at CES. And while I didn’t see anything like food reactors or much in the way of 3D food printers, I expect CES 2019 to rectify that situation.

Smart Booze

Smart beer appliances, wine serving/preservation devices, and IoT connected wine shelves were plentiful this year. CES also gave many the first peek at the home distilling system from PicoBrew, the PicoStill.

We’ll be watching all these trends this year, so if you want to keep up, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter. Also, you can hear about many of these trends at Smart Kitchen Summit Europe, which is in Dublin on June 12th.

Aryballe’s Digital Nose On Display at CES

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: