Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

A Google patent for a wearable aims to make you smell better when you need to smell better. The patent was issued this month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Google was granted a patent for an "odor removing device" also referred to as a "fragrance emission device" that carries an activity sensor, a communication portion, and a route-suggesting portion. The device can perform a number of functions. It can tell if you have body odor and it can deodorize the odor too; it can steer you away of friends who may be in locations where they would bump into you—and your bad odor. The device would map out an alternative route on your phone so that you can avoid them while you are smelling so bad. The patent talks about an activity module which can detect when the user starts to exert himself or herself. The module may pick up a rise in sweat levels, increase in body odor or body temperature, or any other parameter that may indicate exertion.

What would the odor-zapper smell like? According to the patent, it might be in the form of a fragrance or it might be an odor neutralizer, thereby eliminating the body odor instead of covering it up. Users can skip the fragrance-emission portion altogether. "For instance, the user may be planning on showering immediately after the physical activity, and therefore may choose to reject the fragrance emission."

Michael Franco in CNET commented that "Far and away, the strangest part of the 'fragrance emission device' has to do with the way it would connect to your social-media channels and warn you when friends were around and you weren't smelling your freshest." One would be told of an alternate route to avoid the chance of exposing social contacts to an unpleasant odor.

Trevor Mogg in Digital Trends called it an "intriguing device" and said the device "will certainly give hope to those with chronic body odor, as well as relief to those with a keen sense of smell." Mogg said, "if the recent proliferation of fitness-focused apps and wearables really does mean we're becoming more active, then perhaps we're getting smellier, too, in which case maybe Google's onto something here…." Eric Hal Schwartz wrote in DC Inno that "if wearable technology for fitness keeps booming, it's easy to imagine Google teaming up with athletic clothing makers to put its gear into people's clothes so that they'll never smell bad no matter how much they sweat."

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