What if someone tells you that it is now possible to smell things remotely even through your phone, sounds absurd right!! To one’s wonder this is possible now through technology.
Researchers have developed technology featuring an electronic nose that can help people to recognize certain smells like the aroma of coffee by instructing a small and wearable device to release scent molecules similar to it.
And the best thing is that this type of digital communication can take place from any place of the world no matter how great the distance is.
The researchers call this latest development in the field of digital scent technology “Scentronic.”
According to Chunyu Yang, an Ohio State University doctoral student in materials science and engineering and lead author of a study describing the technology published in the journal Science Advances, “In simple terms, it connects ‘smelling something here’ with ‘recreating the corresponding smell somewhere else.”
“The idea is to add smell to the visual and audio information we already share remotely, making those experiences more engaging,” Yang said.
Scentronic is a compact platform that combines odor sensing (e-nose) and odor generation to enable remote odor sharing. An electronic nose detects chemical compounds using gas sensors, a machine-learning model classifies the odor, and the information is transmitted over the internet to a scent generator.
Scent molecules themselves are not transmitted online, only the digital data representing the scent is sent to trigger local fragrance release.
Speaking about its application, it can be used to share food aromas with family and friends, experience more immersive virtual reality and augmented reality and perform remote online shopping.
Scentronic is strictly a non-commercial research prototype. There are some obstacles for its commercial use such as AI training needs expansion to handle complex, real-world mixtures of smells and generators require improved scent fidelity, refill ability, durability, safety, and lower manufacturing costs.
