Will
touch, smell and taste be part of the Internet of Everything
experience? The ‘pervasive computing' department of a UK university
recently launched a mobile app capable of transmitting aromas remotely,
paving the way for a new era of multi-sensory digital communications.
Experts have plenty of ideas about what will constitute the next wave
of the Internet and mobile communications. But in the ‘Pervasive
Computing' department of City University London in the UK, Professor
Adrian Cheok and his team are certain this will involve a fuller sensory
experience – involving smell, taste and touch.
It is a future that is already starting to take shape. In late
January, Professor Cheok took his department's technology to the
world-renowned Madrid Fusion culinary festival in Spain, where he
unveiled a mobile device and app combination – Scentee – which is
capable of emitting food flavors. The technology, developed with a
partner in Japan, is believed to be a world first.
Because of the context of the launch, the emphasis at the Madrid
festival was the potential for chefs to showcase more of what they do to
potential customers - above and beyond photos of their dishes which
rarely do their creations justice. But Cheok notes that this is just a
glimpse of what's possible.
‘Wish you were here'
Cheok's background is in augmented reality – the type of technology
we're seeing now in innovations such as Google Glass. But to achieve
a rich simulated reality you need to go beyond audio-visual media, he
says. This is also the next area of potential for the Internet, he
claims.
"Smell, taste and touch are important means of communication," Cheok
explains. "As we move beyond the ‘information age' to an era of
sharing experiences, what we want to do is give others more of a sense
of ‘being there'."
That means being able to smell the coffee, taste the ice-cream, and
feel the touch of another person. Cheok's innovations include ‘huggable
pajamas', "so parents/grandparents and kids can feel each other's
presence from opposite sides of the world via the Internet," he
explains. A more practical, scaled-down version of this is a wearable
ring – RingU - that can remotely transmit a squeeze to a loved one's
hand (via a Bluetooth 4.0 connection to a smartphone). "Touch is so
important for communication, and for times when you can't take a call,
receiving a reassuring squeeze via the fingers can mean a lot." Remote
‘kissing' applications are further areas of exploration.
Taste and smell, meanwhile, are important because they are attached
to the limbic system and associated parts of the brain that are
responsible for emotion, mood and memory. The ability to simulate these
sensory experiences at distance has great potential in all sorts of
applications, from in-store advertising (for example, assigning wafts of
scent to frozen food aisles – of what a product would smell like when
cooked), to the use of smell as a memory trigger (with potential use for
Alzheimer's patients, and so on).
Emotionally wired
So how does it all work? At this stage the technology is pretty
crude, but undoubtedly this will be refined in future iterations, once
the mechanics have been perfected.
In a taste scenario, a device with electrodes is used to stimulate
taste neurons and taste sensations on the tongue, activated by digitized
information sent over the Internet (as chemicals themselves can't be
transmitted). Smell, which continues to be a work in progress, is the
subject of similar projects, this time applying magnetic fields to the
back of the mouth to stimulate the olfactory receptor, again without
chemicals. In the case of Scentee, the smelling device is a bit like an
inkjet printer, containing sachets of scents, triggered by a smartphone
app.
Cheok sees potential for a fuller sensory experience in TV, cinema
and art as well as ‘emotional' advertising, medical applications, and
remote interpersonal communications. The gaming world will undoubtedly
be keen to embrace it too – creating even deeper immersion experiences
where players are able to smell the burning rubber during a car chase.
He says his university department in the UK is one of only a few
groups of computer scientists globally to be looking seriously at
multi-sensory media today. The City University London Pervasive
Computing faculty combines several disciplines, from electrical
engineering (Cheok's background), to neuroscience.
Cheok has connections to a team in Japan which is doing related work.
In particular, a professor in Tokyo is working on new kitchen utensils
that can alter the taste of food, for example to artificially make a
dish appear sweeter or saltier - without the need to add the actual
ingredient. With growing pressure on families and food producers to
reduce levels of sugar and salt, this could be a development with both
positive health implications and considerable commercial mileage.
(see bottom for IWAN Lunch & Learn information)
