New detecting robot nose can sniff out fraudulent whiskies

Whisky connoisseurs spend hundreds of hours over the course of their life training to spot the subtle differences between certain brands, regions and styles.

But now a group of scientists at the University of Technology: Sydney (UTS) have developed an e-nose that can do a similar job. The prototype, which is called NOS.E, can differentiate between the brands, regions and styles of six whiskies – and in under four minutes.

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The efficacy of the nose prototype was first verified in 2019 at a field display at CEBIT Australia trade show. At the time, the nose achieved 96.15%, 100%, and 92.31% accuracy in the brand name, region, and style classification, respectively.

Three blended malts and three single malt whiskies were used in the experiment. The nose was able to detect some well-known brands including Johnnie Walker red and black label whisky, Ardberg, Chivas Regal and Macallan's 12-year-old whisky.

The e-nose was primarily created as an innovative way to combat fraud. In 2018 it was reported that “A third of rare and collectable Scotch whiskies in private collections and for sale on the secondary market may be fake.” And this was just the private collections.

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With the size of the global whisky market today being worth approximately $80 billion (€74 billion), there is real potential for fraudulent behaviour, and this is where NOS.E may be able to help.

In a paper by IEEE Sensors Journal published this fortnight, the scientists behind the e-nose said, “A rapid and real-time assessment of whisky quality could prove beneficial to wholesalers and consumers.” 

The project has been spearheaded by Associate Professor Steven Su, working with PhD students Wentian Zhang and Taoping Liu, and chemists Professor Shari Forbes and Dr Maiken Ueland.

“Up until now, detecting the differences between whiskies has required either a trained whisky connoisseur, who might still get it wrong, or complex and time-consuming chemical analysis by scientists in a lab,” said Associate Professor Su.

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The nose in some ways imitates a human olfactory system. It has eight gas sensors that detect the odour molecules which come from each vial of whisky. After detecting the molecules, it sends the data to a computer, which then uses an algorithm to produce fast results about the whisky the nose has ‘smelt’.

The technology, which is still in its early days, has the potential to expand to help dozens of other industries including wine, other spirits and perfume.

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