Automotive researchers are developing a no-stink car. Soon, automakers will be able to build cars that protect occupants’ noses from virtually any unpleasant smells. That includes exterior fumes from sources such as farms, hot road tar and other vehicles as well as interior odours such as smoke or smelly fellow passengers.
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The trick is combining existing technology with some new devices, says Maximilian Fleischer, principal researcher for gas sensors at Siemens VDO Automotive in Munich.
“We’re close to having ‘wellness’ sensors that can automatically control the quality of the air inside the car: temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, even smell,” he says.
Fleischer’s vision is a vehicle that automatically maintains passenger-compartment air at an optimum level without requiring the driver to make manual adjustments. The car would detect and adjust for a variety of conditions. For instance, it would activate the filter and recirculation system when passing a field freshly sprayed with manure and allow more fresh air in the car and dehumidify the cabin if a carload of passengers was starting to cause the windows to fog.
The car would integrate heat and humidity sensors to adjust the cabin climate to correspond with how the human body perceives temperature.
Most of the devices – such as the odour-absorbing filters – that are necessary to achieve Fleischer’s goal already exist, so lower cost sensors and integrated electronics are all that is missing, Fleischer says.
The same gas sensors that detect CO2 or the sulphur compounds in manure and tar outside the car are becoming inexpensive enough to be used to monitor the inside air too, Fleischer says. Siemens VDO has developed low-cost, millimetre-sized microprocessors that detect various gases.
“We already use these sensors in engine-management controls,” he says. “This is just using them elsewhere in the car.”
