When Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) released a prototype sensor for allowing smartphones to smell, it didn't merely replicate what a human nose can do.
Once deployed, the phone will be able to detect aromas far more precisely than human noses.
What is the enterprise IT potential here Quite a bit.Let's start with a few dangers.
When employees smell smoke, electrical burning or a gas leak, companies lose valuable time trying to find the source, especially if the smell is coming from behind a wall.
That's mostly because human noses are fine — to varying degrees, changing from person to person — at detecting smells, but the nose can quickly become accustomed to the smell.
A smell-equipped phone, however, could indicate that the smell's concentration at this instant is x parts per million and that theconcentration increases when moving north and decreases when moving south.
That alone could potentially save lives.