Detect Air Pollution Levels With This Helmet

Living with pollution – that seems to be what most of us are doing these days, especially for those of us who happen to reside in cities that are clogged up with cars and a blanket of haze that does not seem to lift – ever. Well, it seems that is the price to pay for “progress”. Here is a rather strange device that looks as though it would be better suited for medieval times – the Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer, which is a helmet that lifts up a person’s lips mechanically. The reason for doing so? No, it is not meant to help you make a career out of funny faces to entertain the crowd, but rather, to detect the levels of air pollution in your immediate vicinity at a far higher level of accuracy.

The Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer works this way – it gained inspiration from observing horses, pulling back their lips to show their front teeth. Horses do that not to smile, but rather, to sniff out chemicals in the air, and the Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer’s designer, Susanna Hertrich, figured out that humans might want to follow suit.

There will be relevant sensors in the Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer which are capable of detecting carbon dioxide levels in the air. All collected data will then be forwarded to an Arduino board, which in turn figures out whether CO2 levels are at a high enough level to be dangerous. This will in turn make gears in the headset to move, lifting the hooks attached to the user’s upper lip, which is a warning to the user that the air is highly polluted.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: invention