Our Co-founder Ema headed to beautiful Lecco in Italy last week to join global experts, industry leaders and the curious to talk about the practical applications of extended reality at the EUROXR Summer School. Extended Reality, or XR, is a term describing the amalgamation of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), and can be seen as the latest evolution in conceptualising these exciting immersive technologies. New technical capabilities in this field are allowing researchers, practitioners and tinkerers to imagine new applications for sectors like healthcare, education, industry and cultural heritage. And that’s where Ema comes in. Ema’s long career in olfactory science means she is perfectly placed to comment on the possibilities of XR, beyond merely visual and auditory technologies. And so we were honoured for her to be given the opportunity to open the event with a keynote address on Monday, 30 June.
Ema’s talk delved into the history of olfactory interfaces – that is, the way humans have thought about and interacted with our sense of smell over time – and presented her own journey from academic research to startup innovation. The main aim in this exciting new direction of olfactory science is to expand the boundaries of human-computer interaction beyond the dominant sense of sight and sound.
The entertainment industry has long been a key focus of scent technology, and Ema presented a recent example of the successful application of olfactory stimuli in a game setting. The “Time Detectives” augmented reality game, also known as “Time Investigators,” won the SXSW 2023 Innovation Award in the Convergent Gaming category. Developed by Picture This Productions and the Mary Rose Museum, the game allows players to investigate the sinking of Henry VIII’s ship, the Mary Rose, using a multi-sensory AR experience. The game was recognised for its innovative approach to blending historical storytelling with augmented reality technology – including smells.
In fact, the sense of smell is so deeply linked to memory, emotion and physiology that it is a logical next step for XR, with particular focus placed on healthcare and therapeutic applications. Ema outlined the scientific foundations of this work to date, but also showcased some of the engineering and design challenges faced by industry stakeholders. One of these revolves around the complexity of accurately controlling scent delivery in a space – such a bedroom – while avoiding sensory overload. We probably have all experienced this first hand: when walking into a room with an overbearing smell emanating from an air freshener, or someone who indulged in too much aftershave. Another challenge is the current lack of common design language or tool to enable the standard usage of scent stimuli – which, in turn, would allow for the replication of a scent experience over time and in different contexts.
Yet the overall tone of the presentation was a hopeful one – how could it not be – with Ema highlighting the interdisciplinary potential of smell as a powerful, yet as of now underexplored, modality in multisensory human-computer interaction.
Want to talk to us about practical applications of scent tech in VR, AR or XR? Then contact us, we’ll be happy to chat.