Israeli scientists developing disease-sniffing robot

STORY: This new sniffing robot could help advance

disease diagnosis and improve security checks

according to its Israeli developers

Locator: Tel Aviv, Israel

(Neta Shvil, Sagol School of Neuroscience)

"Ultimately, we are trying to create a robot with a sense of smell that will be able to distinguish between smells and to locate them in space."

The robot is equipped with a biological sensor

that uses the antennae of locusts

"Unlike other smelling robots (that) exist today, this robot is based on bio-hybrid principle. The sensor that the robot use to smell is from a biological source, in this case this is a locust antenna, as you can see here, this is the antenna."

"I place an antenna between two electrodes. The electrodes record the neural activity from the neurons inside the antenna as a response to smell. I have smell over here and my robot here. I ran a code that activates the robot and now I'm going to apply the smell."