Airbus plans to test an “electronic nose” device that uses biological cells to mimic what bomb-sniffing dogs can do, reports the Financial Times. The company will deploy jellyfish-shaped sensors, developed by Silicon Valley startup Koniku, in several airport screening tunnels later in 2020.
The technology uses silicon processors bolstered by living cells. “We have developed a technology that is able to detect smell — it’s breathing the air, and it’s essentially telling you what’s in the air,” Koniku founder Oshiorenoya Agabi told the FT. “What we do is we take biological cells, either Hek cells or astrocytes — brain cells — and we genetically modify them to have olfactory receptors.”
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