Nigerian innovator Oshi Agabi reveals computer which can smell explosives

Nigerian innovator Oshiorenoya Agabi is continuing to sail through new heights having recently unveiled a computer chip that can smell explosives. The computer, which is based on mice neurons and not silicon could be implanted into the brain of future robots, training them to recognise danger via odours, definitely the next thing in airport security.

“The brain is the most powerful processor the world has ever seen,” Agabi told TEDGlobal in Arusha about his initiative. The Koniku Kore device is a ground-breaking ‘world first’ that is able to breath in and smell air, meaning it could detect volatile chemicals and explosives or even illnesses such as cancer.

“We believe biology is the most advanced technology on the platform on the planet. Instead of copying the neuron, why don’t we take the neuron and put it in a chip?” Agabi said

Images of the prototype cannot be publicly revealed yet.

TEDGlobal, is back in Arusha, Tanzania, 10 years after it was first held in the country in 2007.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is_-8heuM3o

Currently most big technological companies including Google and Microsoft, are on a whoosh to create artificial intelligence modelled on the human brain.

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Agabi runs Koniku a start-up which operates at the intersection of biotechnology and electronics. The startup describe itself as, the world’s first Neurocomputation Company. It was started over a year ago and Agabi says the company is already making $10 million profit in deals with the security industry.

“We start with a premise that the human brain is the most powerful computer ever devised. We show that capturing that computational power is an engineering problem. Koniku proceeds to meet that challenge with clear solutions.”

Agabi who is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he and his lab mates are working on the puzzle of connecting silicon to biological systems.

“Koniku eventually aims to build a device that is capable of thinking in the biological sense, like a human being. We think we can do this in the next two to five years,” he said earlier this year.