Robot plays the role of a criminal detective

Achievements in the manufacture of robots capable of distinguishing odors and forcing scientists to complete some functions to ' find jobs ' for them.

So they started appearing as experts mixing perfumes, cooks and agronomists. Currently the robot has an electronic nose that has emerged as a criminal investigator. A special detector was fitted to the US police to rely on the smell that sought to bury the corpses.

The first few minutes after death, the deceased's body began to decompose into various chemical compounds. The products of that decomposition evaporate into the surrounding atmosphere. But the smells are often so thin that the nose cannot recognize but relies on dog sightings.

One of the authors of the study, Dr. Dell Spice, said: "The highest efficiency in the current autopsy still belongs to the professional dogs." But the training of a sensitive dog scene takes a lot of time, effort, art and human patience. The second assistant is the device, always ready to work when we turn on the power on the switch.

Electronic nose robot (Photo: NICT)

To equip the 'nose' of electronic nose, scientists studied the smell of 30 basic chemical compounds, emitted from corpses every hour and every day after death. The ' odor collection ' is put into memory so that after investigation, the robot investigator incorporates external elements to report back to the police for the time that the victim was harmed.

Dr. Dell Spice and his assistant Sara Johns spent up to two years to have a collection of corpse smells taught to robotic investigators. In order to obtain these smells, they used dead bodies of dead pigs whose bodies were decomposed at different times. Sara Johns said: " Pigs are a very good model to study. Its body is very similar to the human body when it is alive and dead ."

Dr Spice recounted. In the first three days we determined indole content. On the fourth day, in the composition of putresin, and then the characteristic smell of the corpse called cadaverin.The appearance of different components in the decomposition process allows the robot to determine the victim's downtime and that greatly contributes to the investigation .

New achievements presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, immediately attracted the attention of the critics. The practical use shows that in many cases the robot investigator does things that even a professional dog is helpless.

There is also another application area of ​​robots that sniffs into becoming a vet. The search for signs of decomposition allows the corpses of dead animals to be found in epidemics to kill in time, avoiding widespread diseases.