A Nigerian engineer and neuroscientist, Oshiorenoya Agabi is blazing the trail in America’s Silicon Valley by developing drones that are capable of sm
A Nigerian engineer and neuroscientist, Oshiorenoya Agabi is blazing the trail in America’s Silicon Valley by developing drones that are capable of smelling bombs far away. Oshiorenoya Agabi is the founder and CEO of the Silicon Valley startup, Koniku, a wetware company which is the world’s first neurocomputation company. Koniku is a privately held, venture backed company using biological neurons to interface with the real world. They build systems that use real biological neurons for sensing, control and computation.
The company is currently focused on two related technologies: the odour positioning system and the odour surveillance system. These technologies will replicate sensitivity and specificity levels only seen in biological systems, according to a report by scitechafrica.com. This innovation is based on Agabi’s Ph.D. research in Imperial College London, that allows drug developers to replicate human organ drug interactions using lab on a chip technology in order to radically improve preclinical testing procedures.
“Imagine being able to detect odours a significant distance away with form factors which you can mount on a commercially available drone. The system will be complete with on board biological learning and classification. Koniku is giving machines the ability to smell just like you, isn’t that awesome?” wrote Agabi on his LinkedIn profile.
Oshiorenoya Agabi’s start up, has developed a prototype 64-neuron silicon chip and their first application is making a drone that can smell explosives. According to Osh, the drone would be able to smell bombs several kilometers away, it could also be used for surveying farmland, refineries, manufacturing plants anything where health and safety can be measured by an acute sense of smell.
