AN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL EMULATOR FOR AN ODOR SENSOR ARRAY

In this paper we describe the development of a stand-alone microprocessor-based instrument which can classify intelligently the signals from an array of odour-sensitive sensors. Data from the odour sensor array are initially used to train a neural net on a PC using a software program and then sent down an RS-232C interface to the artificial neural emulator (ANE). The ANE uses multiplexer and ADC chips to condition the array output, followed by a Motorola 6803-based digital processing stage that contains in its RAM or ROM, an artificial neural architecture, neuronal weights and an operating instruction set. The processor computes the output of a neural network, classifies this against a knowledge base of odours and displays the result on a two-line LCD display. The ANE has also been fused with an array of four commercial gas sensors (Figaro Engineering Inc., Japan), a temperature IC and a capacitive humidity sensor to produce a stand-alone intelligent odour-sensing system.