Do You Stink? This Robot Will Tell You

If you’re headed to an important meeting or big date, it’s probably a good idea to make sure you don’t stink. Don’t burden your friends or family members with the heinous job of sniffing your parts, enlist a robot.

Japanese company CrazyLabo teamed up with Kitakyushu National College of Technology to build a robot that looks like a bulldog and another shaped like a woman’s head.

The dog robot sniffs your feet, generating one of four responses depending on how bad the odor. If it’s particularly bad, the robot loses consciousness. If your feet smell okay, the robot will nuzzle up to you.

The female head (named “Kaori,” which can translate as “aroma,” “fragrance” or simply “smell”) does something similar. Exhale onto its face, and it will produce an answer: “Good, like citrus,” “Yuck! You have bad breath,” “No way! I can’t stand it!” and “Emergency taking place!” (These translations are a bit rough).

Both bots use a commercial odor sensor that picks up on certain chemicals in exhaled breath or emitted by feet. Certainly it’s good for a few laughs, though for my part, the robot dog is less creepy than breathing into a woman’s disembodied head.

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