Speaking at the TED Global conference in Tanzania, Agabi said the Computer-based relies on mice neurons and not on silicon.
“The system has been trained to recognise the smell of explosives and could be used to replace traditional airport security,” he said.
Eventually the modem-sized device, dubbed Koniku Kore, could provide the brain for future robots.
Experts said that developing such systems mass-market was challenging.
Most of the big tech firms, from Google to Microsoft, are rushing to create artificial intelligence modelled on the human brain.
While computers are better than humans at complex mathematical equations, there are many cognitive functions where the brain is much better: ‘configuring a computer to perceive or detect smell would require colossal amounts of computational power and energy.’
Mr Agabi is planning to reverse or re-engineer biology, which already accomplishes this function with a fraction of the power it would take a silicon-based processor.
According to him, Biology is technology and deep learning networks are all copying the brain.
