An electronic nose is a device intended to detect odors or flavors. The expression "electronic sensing" refers to the capability of reproducing human senses using sensor arrays and pattern recognition systems. The stages of the recognition process are similar to human olfaction and are performed for identification, comparison, quantification and other applications, including data storage and retrieval.
In all industries, odor assessment is usually performed by human sensory analysis, by chemosensors, or by gas chromatography. The latter technique gives information about volatile organic compounds but the correlation between analytical results and actual odor perception is not direct due to potential interactions between several odorous components.
The electronic nose was developed in order to mimic human olfaction that functions as a non-separative mechanism: i.e. an odor / flavor is perceived as a global fingerprint. Essentially the instrument consists of head space sampling, sensor array, and pattern recognition modules, to generate signal pattern that are used for characterizing odors. Electronic noses include three major parts: a sample delivery system, a detection system, a computing system.
7. Look at the text once again and answer the questions:
1) What does the expression “electronic sensing” refer to? 2) What is the disadvantage of the odor assessment performed by gas chromatography? 3) What parts do electronic noses consist of?
Read text 4 and say what robotically-assisted surgery was developed for.