Koniku Kore is the world’s first device that fuses live neurons from mice stem cells into a silicon chip with an aim to tackle real-world problems in security and healthcare.
It was invented by Oshiorenoya Agabi, a Nigerian Silicon Valley-based neurotechnology entrepreneur in 2015.
Koniku is a Yoruba word from Nigeria meaning immortal and the device is able to detect explosives and cancer cells using an inbuilt chip that merges living genetically modified brain cells and traditional silicon on the basis that silicon alone is insufficient for processing and interpreting data from the human smell.
According to Mr. Agbadi, the sense of smell in dogs to trace terminal diseases or explosives can be cloned as a process on the neuron-based chip as a smell-enabled robot at security checkpoints and public arenas.
The goal of the invention is to “build a truly cognitive system” using artificial neurons (a combination of a neurological and biological material and silicon) within the next five to seven years.