Towards precise spatio-temporal control of scents and air for olfactory augmented reality

Abstract

Scent presentation in conjunction with virtual reality (VR) inherently has a property of augmented reality (AR), as humans always take breath and we cannot block the surrounding air. In this paper, we first categorize various olfactory display techniques in analogy with visual displays for AR. Then we report our recent work on spatial scent presentation. Our approach is a counterpart of spatial AR, that overlays information onto the real world. In order to cover various aspects of olfactory experiences, we make use of multiple methods: wind and vortex rings. We investigated the human sensitivity on the wind direction to show the design requirement of wind display. Also, we considered to use a vortex ring to transfer the scent encapsulated in it. By letting two vortex rings collide and collapse at the target point, a local scent distribution can be generated in the air. However, this approach has been suffered from the uncertainty of vortex collision. For stable generation of mid-air scent distribution, we explored various aspects in expelling vortex rings.