Robot Snot

The cover of my man's Popular Science caught my eye. Apparently bomb robots have synthetic snot which allows them to determine information about the bomb they are sniffing. BUT their little robotic nose is only trained to smell chemical types of smells. This is not enough because scientists are working to make this robotic snot be able to smell things like bananas, peppermint and paint. Uhhhmm, okay.

The idea is to teach the said snot to be able to sniff out diseases as well. They would be used in hospitals to detect throat or eye infections long before any other symptoms appear. Great idea, but if I have no symptoms, why am I in the hospital? And why are you sticking fake snot down my throat? Oh yeah, and when exactly did my doctor become a robot??? Oooh yeah, right around the time the HMO thing kicked in...

Anyhoo..