Olfactory Display Research Articles

Olfactory Display and its Application

Olfactory Display and its Application

Ti3 C2 MXene Paper for the Effective Adsorption and Controllable Release of Aroma Molecules.

Olfactory sensing and perception play an important role in people's daily lives and greatly affects senses, emotions, and behavior. In particular, the development of the controlled release of aroma enhances human's well-being and strengthens interactions with surroundings through olfactory display, especial when combined with visual and audial cues. Here, Ti3 C2 MXene plays a dual-function role as the adsorption site of aroma molecules and the heating source for the controlled release of aroma molecules. Due to abundant termination groups on the surface and the metallic nature, Ti3 C2 MXene provides abundant active sites for the interaction with aroma molecules; simultaneously, MXene can be electrically heated to thermally desorb the aroma molecules from the interaction sites. This approach eliminates the interface incompatibility issues between the heating source and the molecular encapsulation layer in conventional olfactory display system. This work presents the controlled release of the aroma molecule phenethyl alcohol (PA) using Ti3 C2 MXene paper. Ti3 C2 MXene paper serves as the adsorption material and a heating source that achieves 100 °C within 1 s. The relative amount of PA released reaches nearly 100% after 1 min of heating.

An Olfactory Display to Study the Integration of Vision and Olfaction in a Virtual Reality Environment

The paper describes the design of an innovative virtual reality (VR) system, based on a combination of an olfactory display and a visual display, to be used for investigating the directionality of the sense of olfaction. In particular, the design of an experimental setup to understand and determine to what extent the sense of olfaction is directional and whether there is prevalence of the sense of vision over the one of smell when determining the direction of an odor, is described. The experimental setup is based on low-cost VR technologies. In particular, the system is based on a custom directional olfactory display (OD), a head mounted display (HMD) to deliver both visual and olfactory cues, and an input device to register subjects' answers. The paper reports the design of the olfactory interface as well as its integration with the overall system.

Special Issue: Highlights From ASME CIE 2018

Special Issue: Highlights From ASME CIE 2018

Automatic Association of Scents Based on Visual Content

Although olfaction can enhance the user’s experience in virtual environments, the approach is not widely utilized by virtual contents. This is because the olfaction displays are either not aware of the content in the virtual world or they are application specific. Enabling wide context awareness is possible through the use of image recognition via machine learning. Screenshots from the virtual worlds can be analyzed for the presence of virtual scent emitters, allowing the olfactory display to respond by generating the corresponding smells. The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), using Inception Model for image recognition was used for training the system. To evaluate the performance of the accuracy of the model, we trained it on a computer game called Minecraft. The results and performance of the model was 97% accurate, while in some cases the accuracy reached 99%.

Enhancement Method of Surface Acoustic Wave-Atomizer Efficiency for Olfactory Display

Since olfaction is an important sense in human interfaces, we have developed an olfactory display using a surface acoustic wave (SAW) atomizer and micro-dispensers. In this olfactory display, the efficiency of atomization is important in order to avoid smell persistence problems often encountered in human olfactory interfaces. Thus, the SAW device is coated with amorphous Teflon film to change the substrate nature from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. It is also necessary to silanize the piezoelectric substrate surface prior to Teflon coating to enhance the adhesion of the film. A dip coating method was adopted to obtain uniform coating on the substrate. The high-speed solenoid valve was used as micro-dispenser to spout a liquid droplet to the SAW device surface since its accuracy and reproducibility were high. Then, the atomization became easier on the hydrophobic substrate. In this study, the amorphous Teflon coating for minimizing the remaining liquid on the substrate after atomization was studied. The goal of the protocol described here is to show the methods for coating a SAW device surface with amorphous Teflon film and generating the smell using the SAW atomizer and a micro-dispenser, followed by a sensory test.

Enhancement Method of Surface Acoustic Wave-Atomizer Efficiency for Olfactory Display.

Since olfaction is an important sense in human interfaces, we have developed an olfactory display using a surface acoustic wave (SAW) atomizer and micro-dispensers. In this olfactory display, the efficiency of atomization is important in order to avoid smell persistence problems often encountered in human olfactory interfaces. Thus, the SAW device is coated with amorphous Teflon film to change the substrate nature from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. It is also necessary to silanize the piezoelectric substrate surface prior to Teflon coating to enhance the adhesion of the film. A dip coating method was adopted to obtain uniform coating on the substrate. The high-speed solenoid valve was used as micro-dispenser to spout a liquid droplet to the SAW device surface since its accuracy and reproducibility were high. Then, the atomization became easier on the hydrophobic substrate. In this study, the amorphous Teflon coating for minimizing the remaining liquid on the substrate after atomization was studied. The goal of the protocol described here is to show the methods for coating a SAW device surface with amorphous Teflon film and generating the smell using the SAW atomizer and a micro-dispenser, followed by a sensory test.

The Art of Digital Scent - People, Space and Time

The sense of smell is closely related with people across time and space. The aesthetic, affective and evocative aspects of smell are widely portrayed in art practices. Olfactory art has its unique expression that other modalities hardly have. Yet this aesthetic medium seems to be underestimated when it comes to the digital age. Current digital olfaction researches mainly focus on meeting tasks and solving problems. The aesthetic experience and the meaning behind are seldom discussed. This paper proposes a potential area where the people from digital art and digital olfaction can contribute together. This paper firstly gives an overview about the affective and evocative impacts of scent on people across time and space, reviewing how scent is treated as the aesthetic medium in the art form, then examining current usages of olfactory display, and lastly discussing the opportunities lying ahead. It provides the way to appreciate the world aesthetically through this affective and evocative medium.

Information Olfactation: Harnessing Scent to Convey Data.

Olfactory feedback for analytical tasks is a virtually unexplored area in spite of the advantages it offers for information recall, feature identification, and location detection. Here we introduce the concept of information olfactation as the fragrant sibling of information visualization, and discuss how scent can be used to convey data. Building on a review of the human olfactory system and mirroring common visualization practice, we propose olfactory marks, the substrate in which they exist, and their olfactory channels that are available to designers. To exemplify this idea, we present VISCENT: A six-scent stereo olfactory display capable of conveying olfactory glyphs of varying temperature and direction, as well as a corresponding software system that integrates the display with a traditional visualization display. Finally, we present three applications that make use of the viScent system: A 2D graph visualization, a 2D line and point chart, and an immersive analytics graph visualization in 3D virtual reality. We close the paper with a review of possible extensions of viScent and applications of information olfactation for general visualization beyond the examples in this paper.

The Odor Characterizations and Reproductions in Machine Olfactions: A Review.

Machine olfaction is a novel technology and has been developed for many years. The electronic nose with an array of gas sensors, a crucial application form of the machine olfaction, is capable of sensing not only odorous compounds, but also odorless chemicals. Because of its fast response, mobility and easy of use, the electronic nose has been applied to scientific and commercial uses such as environment monitoring and food processing inspection. Additionally, odor characterization and reproduction are the two novel parts of machine olfaction, which extend the field of machine olfaction. Odor characterization is the technique that characterizes odorants as some form of general odor information. At present, there have already been odor characterizations by means of the electronic nose. Odor reproduction is the technique that re-produces an odor by some form of general odor information and displays the odor by the olfactory display. It enhances the human ability of controlling odors just as the control of light and voice. In analogy to visual and auditory display technologies, is it possible that the olfactory display will be used in our daily life? There have already been some efforts toward odor reproduction and olfactory displays.

Multicomponent Olfactory Display Using Solenoid Valves and SAW Atomizer and its Blending-Capability Evaluation

An olfactory display for blending many ingredients at any recipe was developed. It consists of microdispensers based upon solenoid valves and surface acoustic wave atomizer. The accuracy and stability were much improved compared with previous olfactory display using micropumps. Then, its blending capability was tested using sensory test such as triangle test. It was found that the scent blended in the proposed olfactory display was identical to the one blended in advance in the liquid phase. Finally, the durability of the amorphous Teflon coating used for enhancing atomization capability was investigated. The durability of the amorphous Teflon coating was much improved when the concentration of silane-coupling agent was modified.

BioEssence: A Wearable Olfactory Display that Monitors Cardio-respiratory Information to Support Mental Wellbeing.

This work introduces a novel wearable olfactory display that provides just-in-time release of scents based on the physiological state of the wearer. The device can release up to three scents and passively captures subtle chest vibrations associated with the beating of the heart and respiration through clothes.BioEssenceiscontrolledviaacustom-madesmartphone app that allows the creation of physiological rules to trigger different scents (e.g., when the heart rate is above 80 beats per minute, release lavender scent). The device is wireless and lightweight, and it is designed to be used during daily life, clipped on clothes around the sternum area or used as a necklace. We provide a description of the design and implementation of the prototype and potential use cases in the context of mental wellbeing.

Development of a Portable, Multichannel Olfactory Display Transducer

In this paper, we report on the development of a simple, yet innovative multichannel olfactory display. Unlike other sensory stimuli (specifically sight and sound), digital olfactory technology has yet to have wide-spread commercial success. Our proposed system will release up to eight different liquid phase aromas (essential oils) using a thermal mechanism. The unit contains a speed controlled fan, temperature control of the heating element, and a gas sensor to provide feedback to inform the release rate. It can be connected (via Bluetooth low energy) to a tablet/computer to control the timing and intensity of the aroma. External measurements show that aromas can be detected within a few seconds of release and produce a broad range of intensities from low parts per million (ppm) to 10 s of ppm.

Investigation and improvement of atomization efficiency based on SAW device coated with amorphous fluoropolymer film for olfactory display

This paper reports on a method to realize the instant and high-efficiency atomization for liquid perfumes in an olfactory display system using surface acoustic wave device coated with amorphous fluoropolymer film. The liquid perfumes diluted with ethanol tend to spread into a thin film on LiNbO3 substrate before atomization, which causes low atomization efficiency and serious smell persistence. The proposed method employs a layer of 400 nm thick amorphous fluoropolymer film Cytop on SAW substrate to maintain the droplet’s sphere-like shape due to the excellent hydrophobicity. Amino-based silane coupling agent was used to enhance the adhesion. The difference of atomization process between hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces was clearly revealed. With the finer and more stable mists being generated on coated surface, the significant improvement of atomization efficiency was demonstrated. Sensory test results on three liquid perfumes show that the smell persistence was greatly reduced after the coating.

Development of Olfactory Display That Can Shift Odor Presentation Position and Switch Kind of Presented Odor According to User’s Face Position and Direction

Development of Olfactory Display That Can Shift Odor Presentation Position and Switch Kind of Presented Odor According to User’s Face Position and Direction

ウェアラブル嗅覚ディスプレイによる匂い場の生成・提示( 五感情報インタフェース)

ウェアラブル嗅覚ディスプレイによる匂い場の生成・提示( 五感情報インタフェース)

Evaluating Industrial Products in an Innovative Visual-Olfactory Environment

The sense of smell has a great importance in our daily life. Recently, smells have been used for marketing purposes for improving the people's mood and for communicating information about products as household cleaners and food. However, the scent design discipline can be used for creating a “scent identity” of these products not traditionally associated to a specific smell, in order to communicate their features to customers. In the area of virtual reality (VR), several researches concerned the integration of smells in virtual environments. The research questions addressed in this paper concern if virtual prototypes (VP), including smell simulation, can be used for evaluating products as effectively as studies performed in real environments, and also if smells can enhance the users' sense of presence in virtual environments. For this purpose, a VR experimental framework including a prototype of a wearable olfactory display (wOD) has been set up, and experimental tests have been carried out.

Tiny Olfactory Display Using Surface Acoustic Wave Device and Micropumps for Wearable Applications

Olfaction is expected to provide reality and immersive feeling in multimedia contents. Thus, an olfactory display, a gadget to present scents to one or more user(s), has been developed for a past decade. A wearable olfactory display has advantage from the viewpoint of reducing the odorant diffusion into the atmosphere and is appropriate for virtual reality applications. In this paper, we developed a portable olfactory display using a surface acoustic wave (SAW) device and micropumps. To realize a miniaturized olfactory display, we implemented a signal generator into field programmable gate array and we designed the dedicated unit combining micropump with odorant reservoir. To evaluate the olfactory display, we used a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) gas sensor. In the experiment, we found the proper angle of the olfactory display and the maximum distance at which the user can certainly sniff scents. In addition, we confirmed that the olfactory display can present intended concentration of the odorant. Furthermore, it was found that the olfactory display can atomize even a low-volatile odor compound with the micropump providing insignificant amount of odors to the SAW device.

Integrating Scents Simulation in Virtual Reality Multisensory Environment for Industrial Products Evaluation

ABSTRACTThe sense of smell has a great importance in our daily life. In recent years, scents have been used for marketing purposes for improving the person's mood and of communicating information about products as household cleaners and food. However, scents can be also used for any kind of products to communicate their features to customers. In the area of Virtual Reality several researches have focused on integrating scents in virtual environments. The research questions addressed in this work concern if scents can contribute to increase the users’ sense of presence in the virtual environment, and also if Virtual Prototypes, including the sense of smell, can be used for evaluating products as effectively as studies performed in real environments. For this purpose, a Virtual Reality experimental framework including a prototype of a Wearable Olfactory Display has been set up, and experimental tests have been performed.

A reproducible olfactory display for exploring olfaction in immersive media experiences

Olfaction, the sense of smell, is an important perceptual function. It has been shown to enhance the quality of life and to facilitate memory recall. However, despite its importance and potential benefits, olfaction is often neglected when creating immersive media experiences (IMEs). The probable reason is that olfactory displays are not readily available. We have developed a reproducible olfactory display that is simple and affordable to make olfactory displays more available. More importantly, we have conducted three exploratory studies on the effects of olfaction. The results of these studies indicate that olfaction is a nuanced sense that can have both positive and negative effects on user experiences. Hence, further research is needed to better understand and design for olfaction in IMEs.