Science! By Lee Mathews Feb. 7, 2014 12:30 pm
The Touch ID sensor on your shiny, new iPhone 5S is pretty slick, but what if your smartphone could identify you by smell? It’s not as farfetched as it sounds.
Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have created a new system that can identify individuals with an 85% accuracy rate simply by sniffing out their unique aromatic signature. That might not be the kind of accuracy you expect from biometrics, but it’s actually pretty good in this case.
Scanning for scent can be done without any real hassle, the Spanish team points out. Anywhere you’ve got to pause before proceeding — the turnstyle at a stadium, subway, or concert venue, a walk-through metal detector, even a revolving door — the sensors could take a whiff and figure out who you are.
Heck, you could even have a door on your house or car one day that only opens when it smells you or a family member standing nearby.
There is, however, a serious privacy concern here, too. Anyone who has a problem with the thought of facial recognition systems being tied into public surveillance cameras won’t be keen on authorities sticking their digital noses in our business.
A network of connected scent scanners like this would make it fairly easy for our daily comings and goings to be tracked with tremendous accuracy. There’s always the argument that you don’t have anything to be concerned about if you’re not doing anything illegal, but the fact that our scent trails could one day be digitally archived by governments is still a little unnerving.
And just in case you missed the Mythbusters where they tested this out: no, you can’t just dive in a creek to wash away your scent and become “invisible.”
On a less creepy note, researchers are also looking into this scent system as way to detect leukemia and colon cancer in their early stages. It’s already been shown that dogs can sniff out ovarian cancer, so the potential is definitely there.
[Image credit daveograve on Flickr]
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Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have created a new system that can identify individuals with an 85% accuracy rate simply by sniffing out their unique aromatic signature. That might not be the kind of accuracy you expect from biometrics, but it’s actually pretty good in this case.
Scanning for scent can be done without any real hassle, the Spanish team points out. Anywhere you’ve got to pause before proceeding — the turnstyle at a stadium, subway, or concert venue, a walk-through metal detector, even a revolving door — the sensors could take a whiff and figure out who you are.
Heck, you could even have a door on your house or car one day that only opens when it smells you or a family member standing nearby.
There is, however, a serious privacy concern here, too. Anyone who has a problem with the thought of facial recognition systems being tied into public surveillance cameras won’t be keen on authorities sticking their digital noses in our business.
A network of connected scent scanners like this would make it fairly easy for our daily comings and goings to be tracked with tremendous accuracy. There’s always the argument that you don’t have anything to be concerned about if you’re not doing anything illegal, but the fact that our scent trails could one day be digitally archived by governments is still a little unnerving.
And just in case you missed the Mythbusters where they tested this out: no, you can’t just dive in a creek to wash away your scent and become “invisible.”
On a less creepy note, researchers are also looking into this scent system as way to detect leukemia and colon cancer in their early stages. It’s already been shown that dogs can sniff out ovarian cancer, so the potential is definitely there.
[Image credit daveograve on Flickr]
More...
