Smelling Remotely: Hudson Valley Team among Winners in World's Largest K-12 Science Competition

 PHOTO: AP for Toshiba

The national winners of Toshiba and NSTA’s ExploraVision, the world’s largest K-12 science competition, included a team from Arlington High School in LaGrangeville.

• 2nd Place Winning Project, Grades 7-9: Arlington High School, Lagrangeville, N.Y. The VISOR: A Neuro-olfaction Device for Perceiving Smell Remotely

Here's what they said about their project:

Technology for the transition of light and sound over long distances, e.g. TV and radio, has revolutionized society. On the contrary, the technology to perceive a smell remotely is in its infancy, and has severe limitations such as latency, residual and infidelity. A neuro-olfactory device named the VISOR is described in this article. Relying on electrodes positioned over the olfactory blub, the VISOR can sense neural signals triggered by smell, and encode the signal into a file. The internet, Bluetooth, and other data transfer mechanisms can transfer this file to a distant VISOR where it can be decoded into electric waveforms. The VISOR recreates smell by electrically stimulating the olfactory bulb. This disruptive breakthrough overcomes shortcomings in prior arts. The VISOR can have profound impacts on education, entertainment, collaboration, e-commerce, rehabilitation and law enforcement.
Project website: http://dev.nsta.org/evwebs/3978m/

The Awards Weekend was held in Washington, DC June 11 to honor the national winners.

Watch the video: