Japanese invent robot dog to sniff out stinky feet

We've probably all seen the commercial on TV for Febreze that talks about going nose blind. My son has this problem, his room smells like an armpit's, armpit and will make your eyes water whilst he happily plays Destiny 2 oblivious to the stink. At least if your room stinks, you can leave, but if your feet stink the smell follows you around.

The Japanese aren't the folks to let sneaky stink gross out other people around them, so they want to know, but might not want a person to tell them their feet stink. To help put a stop to stank, they have invented a robotic dog that will sniff your tootsies and tell you if they stink. In perhaps the best design decision ever made, if your feet stink too bad the little robot dog will pass out and fall over.

The robot is called Hana-chan and apparently hana means nose and chan is a common girl's nickname. If your feet are only moderately stinky, Hana-chan will bark. The bot is a smallish little gadget that reminds me of those robot dogs that did continual backflips on a stand at the mall toy store growing up.

It stands 15cm tall and has an odor sensor for a nose. One the bot revives from passing out at your feet stink, it will spray an air freshener to help remove the offending odor. The fact that the designers didn't put the air freshener dispenser under the robot dog so she had to hike a leg to spray it is perhaps the biggest downfall of the design.

A company called Next Technology created the robot in response to a Japanese man who says his daughter told him his feet were stinky, but he didn't want to know how bad they stank because he would "feel hurt." The robot was invented to alert people with similar concerns. Strong body odor smells can be seen as a form of harassment in Japan. The robot dog will go on sale in Japan early next year at a price working out to about $9,200. Maybe stinky feet isn't that big of a deal.

SOURCE: Japan Times