In the future we will be able to augment our senses with touch, taste and smell being enabled through the internet.
Imagine in ten years from now being able to pick a restaurant that you’re interested in, choose a dish from their online menu, and have the scent of that dish emitted directly through your computer. Then via another device, you will taste a sample of the food.
Imagine also for devices to enable shoppers to feel the fabric on a couch without setting foot inside a showroom.
Pretty cool, right? While intriguing, these ideas seems pretty far-fetched.
But wait a minute.. our cars are in production to soon be fully autonomous, and be able to drive themselves, so why would we discount the possibility of our electronics being able to engage our senses of touch, taste and smell?
Not only that, but a man named Adrian David Cheok who is the Professor of Pervasive Computing at City University London has already invented a device called “Scentee” that permits users to have the sense of smell. Scentee plugs into a smartphone and can spray tiny clouds of fragrances, including flowers, fruits and coffee. Choek says the person speaking can activate the device, enabling 100 different smells to choose from.
How about that for your air freshener in the bathroom, or a nice distraction from the gross odor you’ve been smelling on the subway?
This also enables a sense of touch from a ring-like device that is connected wirelessly to your smartphone. The device sends a soft, electrical squeeze when a person on the other end of a phone conversation does the same.
You can be in New York, and your friend can be in London, but if you squeeze your finger, they’ll get a squeeze on their finger through the internet. It’s a way of touch communication with small mobile devices.
In 2014, Harvard scientists, one being David Edwards, have also successfully transferred their first scent from Paris to New York via an iPhone app called oSnap.
The champagne and passion fruit macaroon-scented message was transferred through this new communication platform, allowing you to take a photo of something and tag it with a few aroma notes (from more than 3,000 scents to choose from). These smells are then transferred via a pipe-like smelling station called an oPhone Duo and are controlled by the iPhone app oSnap.
These devices are truly revolutionary, and scientists hope to continue their research to one day be able to emit those food smells from a chosen menu item online.
A new system is currently in development by San Francisco-based Adamant Technologies, which has figured out a way to digitize our sensory functions, like taste and smell.
While the human nose uses around 400 sensors to fulfill these functions, this system in development will use up to 2,000 sensors, enabling smartphones to have a better sense of smell than people do.
They will be able to detect anything from bad breathe to spoiled leftovers in the fridge.
While we might have to wait for this particular technology to come out, let’s say by 2025, it is cool to know that it is in the works.
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The Next Stage of The Internet’s Revolution Will Allow for Touch, Taste and Smell is a post from: LifeDaily