An unencumbering, localized olfactory display

Abstract

Olfaction is considered to be an important sensory modality in next-generation virtual reality (VR) systems. We currently focus on spatiotemporal control of odor, rather than capturing and synthesizing odor itself. If we simply diffused the odor into the atmosphere, it would be difficult to clean it away in a short time. Several olfactory displays that inject the scented under the nose through tubes have been proposed to realize spatiotemporal control of olfaction, but they require the user to wear something on one's face. Here, we propose an unencumbering olfactory display, by conveying a clump of scented from a certain remote place to the user's nose. To implement this concept, we used an air cannon that generates toroidal vortices of the scented air. We conducted a preliminary experiment to examine the possibility of this method's ability to display scent to a restricted space. The result shows that we could successfully display incense to the target user.