Advanced Study of Odor Communication

气味通信的研究最近已经逐步尝试。由于气味不能被现有的设备检测到用于该目的，我们的目的是在本研究中开发一种气味通信工具，其中由传感系统或质谱仪检测到的气味由远程气味发生器再生。首先，我们开发了一种气味混合器，其仅由廉价的电磁阀组成。虽然电磁阀只有两种状态，ON或OFF，但中间值可以通过快速打开或关闭时的打开时间来表示。采用delta-sigma调制方法控制电磁阀，成功研制了8种气味混合器，并采用最优控制输入理论等自适应反馈控制算法，通过传感器阵列和混合器记录了一种气味。我们成功地记录了由五种成分组成的苹果香精的配方。此外，我们将目标气味近似为仅由几种组分气味组成的气味。将目标9组分气味近似为5组分气味后，通过人体感官测试，发现近似气味与目标气味足够相似，并进行了将质谱仪用作传感器的实验。结果表明，当注入量保持不变时，叠加定理成立。如能建立自动进样方法，质谱仪将有很大的发展前景。最后，制作了一个气味广播网页。任何人都可以访问该主页，嗅闻在远程站点记录的气味。我们成功地再生2组分气味在远程站点使用传感器阵列。

Study of odor communication has been recently and gradually attempted. Since scents cannot be detected by the present devices for that purpose, we aimed to develop an odor communication tool in the present study, where a smell detected by a sensing system or a mass spectrometer is regenerated by a remote odor generator.First, we developed an odor blender just composed of cheap solenoid valves. Although a solenoid valve takes just two states, ON or OFF, the intermediate value can be expressed by the period of opening valve when it is rapidly opened or closed. We adopted delta-sigma modulation method to control solenoid valves and succeeded in developing the odor blender with 8 component odors.Next, an odor was recorded by the system with a sensor array and the developed blender using an adaptive feedback control algorithm such as theory of optimal control input. We succeeded in recording the recipe of the apple flavor made up of five components. Moreover, we approximated the target odor as the smell composed of just a few component odors. After the target 9-component odor was approximated as 5component one, the human sensory test revealed that the approximated odor was sufficiently similar to the target odor.Moreover, the experiment on using the mass spectrometer as a sensor was performed. It was found that the superposition theorem was valid when the injected volume was kept constant. The mass spectrometer is promising if the method of the automatic injection is established.Finally, the homepage for broadcasting an odor over Internet has been made. Anyone can access that homepage to sniff the smell recorded at the remote site. We succeeded in regenerating 2-component odor at the remote site using the sensor array.