Mershin, however, believes that we don’t really have to understand how mammals smell to build an artificial nose. He’s betting that things will work the other way around: To understand the nose, we have to build one first. In his efforts with a brilliant mentor named Shuguang Zhang, Mershin has built a device that can just begin to give dogs—his panting adversaries—a run for their money.

— Andreas Mershin of MIT is trying to build a nose. Read more at The Quest to Make a Bot That Can Smell as Well as a Dog at Wired.