Competitors including IBM have also attempted to advance the field of smell-enabled bots, employing technology capable of detecting gas leaks and even creating new perfumes.
A statement on the Google AI Blog said: “Odour perception in humans is the result of the activation of 400 different types of olfactory receptors (ORs), expressed in 1 million olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), in a small patch of tissue called the olfactory epithelium.
“These OSNs send signals to the olfactory bulb, and then to further structures in the brain.