Activity Report

Reported by Corrado Di Natale. 

The 1^st NOSE II workshop entitled “Past and Future on Electronic Noses“, organised by Arnaldo D’Amico and Corrado Di Natale, took place in Rome at the National Research Council 3-4 October 2002. In the workshop participated 81 persons from 19 countries (see Table 1). Participants represented 32 universities and public research centres and 20 companies. 

Table 1 Workshop participants

This workshop followed the ISOEN Conference (International symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Noses), which was held in Rome as well. This allowed people to easily extend their stay in Rome and gave a platform for promotion of the NOSE network. Material (flyers and information sheets) was prepared for this purpose.

This time the strategy of the workshop has been focused on presentations with open discussions on behalf of industries, academic institutions and public research laboratories. Most of the technologies have been considered along the development of the workshop with their strong and weak points while a bit of criticism was addressed towards data analysis procedures so far adopted by the majority of researchers. Sufficient time was left for ample discussion and many interesting new ideas came out, useful for industrial representatives and those researchers more involved in fundamental research.

Workshop programme

Three main sessions were organized, one oriented to manufacturers, another to market and users and the third aimed at indicating possible future directions and developments.

In the section 1 (Manufacturers) there were five presentations from electronic nose companies, including the market leaders. They have shown the consistency of their activity, commented recent results so far obtained, and listed a series of technical and scientific problems yet to be solved for achieving a better performing electronic nose apparatus. Presentations were, for the first time, rather open and really useful for the audience.

Most of the speakers put in evidence the difficulties encountered in the development of real world solutions, and the importance of a strict cooperation with final customers. This puts the companies in the not advantageous position to be dependent, for the development of their product, on the final customers.

Section 2 (Market and users) was dedicated to an overview of the market and some users point of view. Indeed, the e-nose market has appeared with a weak profile in most of the investigated areas: automotive, domestic appliances and food processing as well. This uncomfortable situation, which is common in all over the world, has pushed some fundamental question about its origin, possibly rational in character. One of the sound and accepted answer was: need of a more organized research, at European level, oriented towards a stronger and effective link among industries and academies.

Section 3 (Future directions of development) gave the participants the chance to look into the near future. Problems and expectations in the growing sectors of optical transducers, electronic tongue, miniaturization and new algorithms for artificial olfaction strategies, were addressed, commented and discussed in some depth.

Data analysis arose an intense discussion, putting in evidence the fact that sometimes data analysis tools are critically used and that a more rational experimental design is necessary to correctly evaluate the electronic noses performances. An interesting distinction between model building and model validation was also discussed. Pointing out that almost all the scientific papers present models but rather rarely long time validation of models is discussed.

The presentation on optical transducers gave a critical view of the recent opto-electronic noses appeared in literature. In particular, the claimed very low resolution were discussed indicating how simple calculations shows that an optical transducer very unlikely can have a better resolution of a mass transducer like the quartz microbalance.

Finally an exhaustive review about electronic tongue and the main steps in the route towards a miniaturised electronic nose was also given.

The overall reaction was rather positive and useful especially because it was perceived an opening toward new promising horizons in the field of multisensor system developments.

Some declarations on behalf of participants:

Nose Network objectives should consider, among others:

A more effective dissemination of research results, discussion and cooperation are mandatory within European community and Europe needs to keep technology leadership with an increasing presence of US manufacturers. Intensification of standardization activity by setting up a EU financed E-Nose laboratory (European manufacturer laboratory). This laboratory could allow researchers to test research results. This will speed up and improve technology transfer between academic institutions and manufacturers in the field of sensor development and/or data processing techniques. As detection demands are increasing (food safety, quality constraints..) a continuous effort on sensor development is essential. Sensors and Transducer research activities seem to slow down in EU. Some actions focused on fundamental sensor research are required. (Eric Chanie - Alpha MOS).

I have appreciated the good discussions during and around the workshop. Never before we have had such an open exchange of ideas and more important the identification of problems and limitations even between manufactures of electronic noses. I hope this new openness leads to new approaches both in the development and the marketing of this interesting technology.(Jan Mitrovics – Applied Sensors GmbH).

This workshop gave the possibility of an open discussion between the academic world an those industries involved in Electronic Nose manufacturing. Participants have stimulated in many circumstances the necessity of a deeper knowledge at fundamental level especially in the pattern recognition area where still a lot must be done in view of a more safety data processing procedures. (Zona –Technobiochip)

As a result of the ISOEN 2002 we have seen a good progress in the scientific work about sensor array in instrumentation. Instruments are becoming more specific in order to fulfil the needs of targeted applications. Also the accompanying electronic nose Workshop pointed out that there is still a need for the cooperation between the scientific community, users and manufacturers. Some work on topics like instrument standardization has been initialized successfully during the interesting conference. (Wolf Munchmeyer-Air Sense Analytic).

I appreciated the workshop content and the effort oriented to link industries and public research institutions. I would say that at the end the systems have to be user friendly if they are to be adopted/purchased by typical food user companies. It seems that, from the end user perspective, there has not been much progress; much time is still spent in arguing about data analysis PCA etc. drift, validation, etc. While all these may be necessary it is not an aspect that the end users can be concerned with. They want a system that he can have confidence in, that is reliable, gives adequate information, gives a return on investment, etc. I therefore urge the community not to neglect the end users. In some areas the electronic nose concept has a poor image (from overmarketing in the early years). The systems have to be useful or else the market will die. (Food Science – Australia).