A Japanese company has created an adorable robot dog that can tell you how bad your feet smell, by using a powerful sensor embedded in its nose. If your feet don’t have bad odor, “Hana-chan” will happily wag its tale, if it detects moderately smelly feet, it will start to bark, and if they really stink, it will just fall over like the smell caused it to faint.
Foot odor is a big deal in Japan, where it is customary for people to take off their shoes whenever they enter someone’s home. In fact, subjecting others to foul bodily odors can even be considered harassment in Japan, so it’s no wonder that some of the most brilliant minds in the country’s tech industry have been dedicating their talent to tackling this issue.
Hana-chan has been in development at the National Institute of Technology Kitakyushu College, in Kyushu, for at least 2 years, with a YouTube video of the prototype dating back to 2015, and now, their affiliated company, NextTechnology, is ready to launch a commercial version of the feet-smelling robot.
Named after a play on the Japanese word for ‘nose’, the 15-cm robot dog has a special sensor for a nose, and can tell you if your feet smell just by sniffing them for a few seconds. According to some media reports, Hana-chan can help solve the problem of stinky feet by spraying them with air freshener, but it’s unclear whether this feature comes built-in, or if you’ll have to pay extra for it.
NextTechnology plans to start selling the feet-smelling robot for a whopping ¥100,000 ($9,280).