More on DARPA’s RealNose Project

It’s been only a few months since the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) approved funding for the team’s MIT (microfluidic-integrated transduction) RealNose project, and began working alongside researchers worldwide, including MIT’s Media Lab and Department of Biology, to develop a “portable microfluidic device” capable of identifying a large array of odors. So, what’s the latest word on DARPA’s multi-institutional project? Biomimicry!

According to Eric Paterson, Senior Research Associate at Penn State’s Applied Research Lab, effective development of the RealNose will require researchers to engineer olfactory cells from actual canine olfactory cells. As current techniques are only capable of detecting a limited range of chemicals, Paterson has been studying the mechanisms and transport of canine olfaction in hopes of creating a device as effective as the sniffer of a tracking dog. Along with colleague Brent Craven, Paterson has created a computational fluid dynamics model of a dog’s airway, enabling the team to identify the single passageway responsible for the transport of odors to the pup’s olfactory region and to then engineer their electronic counterparts.

Paterson says the the project is “high risk, high payoff.” But if it succeeds and a marketable technology emerges, the biomimetic RealNose “could be tailored for detecting drugs, explosives, chemical and biological weapons, and even certain types of cancer.”

And, yes–scent marketing!