Mimicking biology: applications of cognitive systems to electronic noses

The electronic nose draws its inspiration from biology. Both the electronic nose and the biological olfactory system consist of an array of chemical sensing elements and a pattern recognition system. This paper reviews the basic concepts of electronic noses and their relationship to biological olfaction. Different approaches to chemical data analysis including statistical methods, standard artificial neural network approaches, and those based on advanced biological models of the olfaction are described. Finally, a prototype system is reviewed.