Benjamin Redford, The Olly Inventor, Wins The Ideal Home Inventor Award

Smelly Robot Wins Future Home Award

A smelly robot has won the Ideal Home Show's 2012 Ideal Home Inventor award, marking 104 years of celebrating 'the home of the future' at the event.

The Olly, which is still in prototype, can produce sweet smells like strawberry or lemon when you get a Facebook mention or your partner's perfume when they message you on Facebook.

Benjamin Redford, inventor of The Olly, said at the awards ceremony: "We're probably going to create a few more web-connected objects, for example the Molly who will turn retweets into sweets so it can give you Maltesers, Skittles or any sweets you like and we're probably going to put that into production as well as the Olly in the next few months, so look out for more from Mint Digital."

The gadget beat nine other contenders for the award, including a motion sensor that can monitor the elderly living on their own, a personal "perceptual pod", a new freestanding microwave and a robot vacuum cleaner.

The "Transport" perceptual pod, is a cosy personal space producing light and sound to create a "trance-inducing field of color, music and vibration".

The inventors describe it as a 'back to the womb experience', with fluffy cloud-like cushions and a temperature-controlled waterbed. Sound vibrations from a subwoofer resonate through your body and send you into a blissful state. The all white domed space is then filled with gentle coloured light.

The Home of the Future, which has run for 104 years, has previously featured gadgets which we now take for granted.

High tech inventions in their time, the vacuum cleaner was displayed at the 1912 fair, and in 1930 the first electric kettle was shown. In 1947 the microwave oven made its debut and in 1959 the Teasmade was introduced.

Whether we will all be taking The Olly for granted in another 100 years is up for debate.

The Ideal Home Show runs from the 16 March until 1 April at London's Earls Court.

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