Digital scent technology is the engineering discipline dealing with olfactory representation. It is a technology to sense, transmit and receive scent-enabled digital media (such as motion pictures, video games, virtual reality, extended reality, web pages, and music). The sensing part of this technology works by using olfactometers and electronic noses. Until now, online communication involved only two of our senses, sense of sight and a sense of hearing. Soon it will involved the third, the sense of smell using a nose. Digital scent technology is the main application of e-nose. With digital scent technology, it is possible to sense, transmit and receive smell through the internet.
Today’s modern advancements in Biotechnology and Nanotechnology are enabling digital scent technology to assist several industry sectors, including the medical technology, nanotechnology sectors as well the entertainment and fashion industry sectors.
Digital smell works by continuously feeding odors from vaporising gel pellets into four air streams, one in each corner of the screen. These air streams are blown out parallel to the screen’s surface by fans, and varying the strength and direction of them spreads the scent to any given spot on the screen.
In the late 1950s, Hans Laube invented the Smell-O-Vision, a system which released scents during the exhibition of a film so that the viewer could “smell” what was happening in the film. The Smell-O-Vision faced competition with AromaRama, a similar system invented by Charles Weiss that emitted scents through the air-conditioning system of a theatre.
Since 1982, research has been conducted to develop technologies, commonly referred to as electronic noses, that could detect and recognise odours and flavours. Application areas include food, medicine and the environment.
During ThinkNext 2010, the Israeli company Scentcom featured a demo of its scent-generating device.
Current obstacles of mainstream adoption include the timing and distribution of scents, a fundamental understanding of human olfactory perception, the health dangers of synthetic scents, and other hurdles.