This "Neuromorphic Humidity Sensor," Inspired by Camels' Noses, Packs Synapse-Like Smarts

Able to precisely locate moisture sources even with direct contact, this sensor boasts "a tunable memory" for on-board AI.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a high-durability, artificially-intelligent humidity sensor capable of locating water sources — inspired by both the human brain and camels' noses.

"Numerous emerging applications in modern society require humidity sensors that are not only sensitive and specific but also durable and intelligent," the researchers explain in their paper's abstract. "However, conventional humidity sensors do not have all of these simultaneously because they require very different or even contradictory design principles."

—The solution: A new type of humidity sensor with integrated intelligence, dubbed by the researchers "a porous zwitterionic capacitive humidity sensor" featuring neuromorphic capabilities inspired by the human brain and a design inspired by camel noses.

"This sensor simultaneously exhibits high sensitivity, discriminability, excellent durability, and, in particular, the highest respond speed among reported capacitive humidity sensors," the team claims of its creation, "with demonstrated applications in the fast discrimination between fresh, stale, and dry leaves, high-resolution touchless human-machine interactive input devices, and the real-time monitoring humidity level of a hot industrial exhaust."

A key feature of the sensor is its ability to operate like the synapses of a brain, driven by the strong interactions between water and hygroscopic zwitterions — molecules with both positive and negative charge regions. "This leads to learning and forgetting features with a tunable memory," the team says, "thus giving the sensor artificial intelligence and enabling the location of water sources."

To prove the principle, the team produced flexible sensor grids, which proved able to quickly respond to moisture from a range of sources — and doubled as a touch-free human interface device, being able to locate the precise location of hovering fingers by the humidity they gave off.

The team's work has been published in the journal ACS Nano under closed-access terms.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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