Apple has just unveiled its first virtual reality headset designed to reproduce smells by combining around thirty different scents, on the initiative of a team of scientists from the City University of Hong Kong.
This experimental device relies on two small devices called smell generators (OG), a new technology that integrates smells into virtual reality and augmented reality applications.
“Recent human-machine interfaces highlight the importance of human sensation feedback, including vision, audio, and haptics, with broad applications in entertainment, medical treatment, and virtual and virtual realities. Olfaction also plays an important role in human perception experiments, ”said Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at CityU, Dr. Yu Xinge, who co-led the study, quoted by the media.
However, current olfaction generation technologies are mainly associated with large accessories to generate odors in an enclosed area or room, or with a bulky built-in virtual reality set.
To reduce this bulk and provide an easy-to-wear accessory, Dr. Yu and his collaborators therefore developed a next-generation wearable olfaction feedback system with wireless programmable capabilities based on networks of flexible and miniaturized odor generators. .
The first is a small skin-embedded patch-like device comprising two OGs, which can be placed directly on the upper lip. With an extremely short distance between the OGs and the user’s nose, it can provide lightning-fast olfactory response.