World's first
smell detector chip for
mass market devices

About us

Along with a great community of industry experts and researchers, SmartNanotubes Technologies shares the vision of digital smell recognition. Our goal is to enable digital smell recognition in a fast and easy way and help our customers to develop product solutions for their own smell and gas detection applications.

Technology

Today machines can see, hear, feel, and even learn. But smell? Not really!
Our nanomaterial-based technology enables machines to use an electronic sense of smell.

Highly Sensitive and Energy Efficient

Our nanomaterials are highly sensitive and are activated in various ways. They operate like different olfactory receptors in our nose, in that they are differentially receptive to different molecules.
As a result, our smell detection chip Smell iX 16 is able to detect gases in the ppb range and thus can be up to 100 times more sensitive compared to other technologies. Furthermore Smell iX16 only consumes about 1µW energy.

Smart Pattern Recognition

Smell patterns are stored in a database, which expands the smell recognition capabilities of electronics devices as it grows. Through artificial intelligence our technology learns to recognise what it „smells“.
This can be compared to the way information is processed in our olfactory system. Smell is initially collected and analysed in the olfactory bulb. For recognition and remembering the cortical brain areas get involved. This evolves over our whole lifetime with more and more „data“ processed.

Custom Development

You have a specific application in mind?

We offer:

custom detector development
custom embedded module development
custom smell/gas mixture characterisation

for adaptation of Smell iX16 detectors and modules to YOUR device.
for creating a digital smell database for YOUR use case.

Highly Sensitive and Energy Efficient

Smart Pattern Recognition

Custom Development

You have a specific application in mind?

We offer:

custom detector development
custom embedded module development
custom smell/gas mixture characterisation

The first multi-channel gas detector chip for the mass market. The sensor elements contain fine-tuned nanomaterials which make the chip small, highly sensitive, energy efficient & affordable. High sensitivity to different gases and VOCs.

Electronic board with four Smell iX 16 detectors and having full functionality to read signals from all 64 individual channels every 2 s and send them out in ASCII format. Can be integrated into different mobile or stationary appliances.

Smell Annotator is a software used to view, annotate and store measurements of the Smell Inspector as well as to recognize annotated smells. Currently, Windows and Linux systems are supported. Android and iOS will follow.

Our technology portfolio consists of the Smell Board iX16×4 with four Smell iX16 detector chips, can be connected to a PC, tablet or smartphone and can be operated with the Smell Annotator software. Compatible with Arduino and Raspberry Pi. The Smell Board will be soon available as an embedded module with a modular and exchangeable sensor board.

Technical Data

Smell iX16:

Dimensions: 22 x 8 mm / 0.87 x 0.32 inch (LxW)
Power consumption: 1 μW
Weight: 0.1 g / 0.0002 lb
Materials: chemiresistor-type nanomaterial based gas detectors, Kapton® foil, particle filter
Temperature: 0°C to +40°C / 32°F to +104°F
Sensitivity: High sensitivity to different gases and VOCs (<80 ppb for NH₃, PH₃, H₂S)

Smell Board iX16x4:

Dimensions: 157 x 40 mm and 67 x 50 mm / 6.18 x 1.58 inch and 2.64 x 1.97 (LxW)
Power consumption: max. 0.28 W
Weight: 45 g / 0.1 lb
Materials: 4 Smell iX16 detector chips, 2 PCBs
Read-out time: all 64 channels every 1.8 s
Read-out format: ASCII
Serial interface
Compatibility: Compatible with Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Smell Annotator:

Smell recognition
Smell digitalization and annotation
Visualization of measurements
Saving measurements and loading saved data
Data format: CSV

Technical Data

Smell iX16:

Dimensions: 22 x 8 mm / 0.87 x 0.32 inch (LxW)
Power consumption: 1 μW
Weight: 0.1 g / 0.0002 lb
Materials: chemiresistor-type nanomaterial based gas detectors, Kapton® foil, particle filter
Temperature: 0°C to +40°C / 32°F to +104°F
Sensitivity: High sensitivity to different gases and VOCs (<80 ppb for NH₃, PH₃, H₂S)

Smell Board iX16x4:

Dimensions: 157 x 40 mm and 67 x 50 mm / 6.18 x 1.58 inch and 2.64 x 1.97 (LxW)
Power consumption: max. 0.28 W
Weight: 45 g / 0.1 lb
Materials: 4 Smell iX16 detector chips, 2 PCBs
Read-out time: all 64 channels every 1.8 s
Read-out format: ASCII
Serial interface
Compatibility: Compatible with Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Smell Annotator:

Smell recognition
Smell digitalization and annotation
Visualization of measurements
Saving measurements and loading saved data
Data format: CSV

Use cases

Thanks to its unique properties Smell iX16 and Smell Inspector can be used across multiple industries. Use cases range from environmental and security applications, home and industrial safety to wearables and IoT lifestyle products. The multi-channel gas detector chip Smell iX16 can be easily integrated into different appliances.

Product Quality

Materials

Building materials are potential sources of VOCs, through degradation of materials or off-gassing from new materials, e.g. solvent-based paints, fabrics and pressed wood products.

Food

Aroma profiling – Understanding the factors that give rise to the aroma differences between similar foods. Food safety – tracking of gases and VOCs giving rise to off-odors, including those that can be used as indicators of food deterioration (shelf-life) or contamination from the materials used in packaging. Food consistency and quality – Ensuring production-line consistency of products from batch to batch.

Medicine

The monitoring of biotechnological fermentation processes, used for the production of modern biopharmaceutical drugs, is becoming ever more relevant for the promotion of economic production, particularly within the manufacturing sector. Up until now, processes have typically been monitored through off-line analysis, which is laborious, costly and frequently delivers results too late to allow for corrective actions.

Safety & Security

Transport

Identifying trace amounts of gases and VOCs that originate from drugs and explosives, to date is solved by sniffer dogs or random sampling. Integrated monitoring is not available.

Consumer Goods

A study of scented consumer goods showed the products emitted more than 100 different VOCs, including some that are classified as toxic or hazardous by federal laws.

Manufacturing

Hazardous gases and VOC emissions can arise from various storage and process sources in manufacturing. Demand for integrated line monitoring for work and product safety is rising.

Air Quality

Environmental

Nitrogen oxides and VOCs play a significant role in the formation of ozone and fine particulates in the atmosphere. Emerging smog can irritate our eyes, nose and throat, and can finally affect our immune system. Permanent monitoring of NOx and VOCs in large cities can help to locate the sources of the air pollution and to predict smog formation.

Household

VOCs, including formaldehyde, are emitted slowly from indoor building materials, furniture, paints and carpets. VOCs are also released in cigarette smoke and detergents, or drift in from attached garages or outdoor sources. They can contribute to acute conditions (e.g. poisonings) as well as cancers and asthma.

Industry

The outgassing behavior of materials used in cleanroom environments has gained importance in various industries, particularly in semiconductor, photovoltaic and aerospace, where a maximum level of VOCs, according to ISO standards, is often defined in the planning phase.

We have already realized several integration projects:

SniffBot – implementation of the Smell Board iX 16x4

Our technology has been successful integrated into the SniffBot, a drone project of the excellence university Technical University of Dresden. Within the project the Smell Board iX16x4 sniffed out dangerous gases and detected leaks in hazardous environments. The Smell Board iX16x4 (weights 45 g), worked stably on a flying drone and by sending comprehensive information on its environment every 1.8 seconds, correctly detected the gas sources despite working propellers. The technology already enables the identification of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gas sources. The sensor is also currently being trained for other hazardous gases and VOCs.

Roboy – use of smell board for food recognition

Smell Board iX 16×4 detected food by smell for humanoid robot Roboy. Roboy 3.0 is an interdisciplinary research project with a gigantic vision supported by big industry players such as Infineon. More than 100 people are working to construct a humanoid robot that is just as functional as the human body. And yes, Roboy will be able even to smell, now. The Smell Inspector was able to distinguish fruits, solvents and various beverages. Rafael Hostettler, CEO of Devanthro GmbH – the Roboy Company, says: “One of our TU Munich Student Teams used the electronic nose from SmartNanotubes connected to a Raspberry Pi to test our machine learning algorithms and to our knowledge there is no other sensing technology which could so efficiently distinguish smells and finally provide the sense of smell to robots”.

Development Service

Smell iX16 is designed for use in unlimited miniaturized electronic and IoT applications in various areas. The detector chip has a high sensitivity to different gases and VOCs and only uses just 1 μW of power. It can thus be powered by various host devices, energy harvesters or batteries.

The Smell iX16 detector chips can be tuned and optimized for a particular use case. Being implemented as an embedded module with a smell recognition functionality it can be easily integrated into any electronic appliances.

Roadmap to Your Application Specific and Smell Related Module

Smell Inspector is a ready-to-use device for anyone. It has Smell Board iX 16×4 with four Smell iX 16 detectors inside, can be connected to a PC, tablet or smartphone and can be operated with Smell Annotator software. Compatible with Arduino and Raspberry-Pi.