This device will tell you if you're stinking!
The Japanese tech company Konica Minolta has come up with an app that will help you self-test if your sweat is bothering others too. The device called 'Kunkun Body' is a pocket-sized smell detector that connects by Bluetooth to a smartphone app and reveals information on your body odour. It retails at the price of 30,000 yen (US$265) but is only available in Japan.
Kunkun Body allows you to self-test your sweat for body odours that are divided into three categories. Put the device against any body part, and the detector will send the result to your smartphone through bluetooth. If it reveals high readings of sweat smells then, a message saying, "Immediate care is needed," would be sent to you.
Konica Minolta, known for producing cameras and printers, shared that the Japanese are "particularly sensitive to smell". The Japanese hate smell so much that they even have a word for office workers who harass their co-workers with their body odour called sumehara, which translates to "smell harassment" in English. Sales of antiperspirants and wipe products in Japan are at its peak.
Daisuke Koda, the incubation lead at Konica Minolta's business innovation centre, got the idea two years ago from a discussion with his colleagues on how insecure the body odour makes them during summer. That is when they started looking for devices that measure body smell but found none. They furthered their study and found body odour was the number one concern at workplaces.
Another Japanese company Sony came up with a portable aroma diffuser by the name of Aromastic. Dubbed as an "Aromatic Walkman", it allows you to select which screen you want to be effused in your surroundings.
The timeline is brewing!
