Japanese robot maker CrazyLabo—together with a team from the Kitakyushu National College of Technology in Fukuoka—has developed a pair of odor-detecting robots that dish out snarky remarks if a person has bad breath or smelly feet.
The female humanoid robot called ‘Kaori’ samples a user’s breath by ‘inhaling’ it through an opening in her mouth.
After a quick analysis, she will give the user a rating from one to four—proclaiming phrases like “it smells like citrus!” if it smells good, or “Yuck! You have bad breath!” if it smells.
For the dog robot called ‘Shuntaro’, it responds to how a person’s feet smell. If it smells ‘pleasant’, it will nestle up to user, but if its stinks, it will ‘lose consciousness’.
The snarky remarks and exaggerated reactions were selected to “encourage offenders to do something about their breath and body odor”.
[via The Asahi Shimbun]