Odor recorder for multi-component odor using two-level quantization method

Abstract

A new algorithm to electronically record an odor composed of the mixture of many components using the odor sensing system was proposed. Since the human impression on the odor mostly depends on the kinds of key components rather than the accurate mixture composition, the odor was approximated with the combination of several components. Moreover, the efficient method to explore the recipe for the odor approximation with the combination of many components was established. Then, the recipe of an apple flavor was recorded using the proposed method and was evaluated by the human sensory test. As a result, it was found that the odor approximated with up to eight components was close to the target apple flavor. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the response pattern of the QCM (quartz crystal microbalance) odor sensor array was a good indicator of the odors detected by human olfaction. The proposed method was useful to realize the odor recorder with many odor components.