Have you ever wondered why Smell-O-Vision never really took off? It’s not because it would be too difficult technologically – it wouldn’t. The biggest hurdle is that people want to see and hear their entertainment, and sometimes feel it, as in the case of rumble packs in video game controllers, but we’re okay with not smelling the perfume a movie character is wearing.

A South Korean startup is trying to rally support for the idea of aroma-enhanced entertainment with a system they call Aromajoin. Entrepreneur Dong Wook Kim remembered his mother remarking when he was a child that smell would shortly follow color in television, and he never let go of the idea. He researched the idea for years, and after receiving his PhD he developed machines that would release odors from solid scent cartridges. The “Aroma Shooters” use fans to push out small amounts of aromas to coincide with pictures on a screen.

Each aroma cartridge is capable of shooting three-second aroma bursts more than 45,000 times. The smells dissipate quickly so they don’t stick around after they are released, and up to six scents can be mixed at a time to create custom aromas. The Aroma Player software used to control the scent release is a little like sound editing software: you find the moment in the video where you want a scent to be released, then drag and drop the appropriate aroma. The software sends out the little puffs of scent corresponding with images at just the right moment.

Currently, Aromajoin offers about 500 scents and the system costs $2,550. Kim is the only person in the world who knows exactly how the whole contraption comes together. He outsources the hardware and circuit boards, but the final assembly is done by the inventor personally in his lab. His ultimate goal for the technology is to make scent as ubiquitous as sound in advertisements and atmosphere creation. Initial markets could include movie theaters, convenience stores, digital advertising, and even the regular person sitting at home and watching their color TV.

The post Smell Your TV Shows With a $2500 Aroma Emitting System first appeared on Gajitz.

It’s widely known that our sense of smell is closely linked to our sense of taste. That’s why kids plug their noses when they eat something they don’t like, and why you can’t taste anything when you have a bad head cold. But tricking the sense of taste can work the other way, as well: smell something pleasant while you’re eating something tasty, and the experience is greatly enhanced.

The Aromafork from Molecule-R plays on the fact that our taste buds can only recognize five basic tastes: sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami (or savory). The rest of our food’s taste comes from aromas hitting the back of the palate. The Aromafork has a small, removable paper membrane just behind the tines. Adding a few drops of liquid aroma to the membrane will cause your brain to “taste” your chosen aroma along with the food you are eating.

Molecule-R’s Aroma R-Evolution set comes with 21 liquid aromas: chocolate, coffee, vanilla, banana, lychee, passion fruit, strawberry, basil, cilantro, mint, almond, coconut, peanut, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, wasabi, butter, olive oil, smoke, and truffle. You can eat your cheesecake with the aroma of chocolate hitting your palate, or go a little nuts and eat your salad while tasting cinnamon.

As you eat, the liquid aromas waft up and through your sinuses, translating into the illusion of taste. If you can learn to ignore food textures, you might be able to eat healthy foods while tricking your brain into believing that you’re eating a decadent treat. For $59 (US) you can get four forks, 21 aromas, 50 diffusing papers, four droppers, and instructions on creating your very own multi-sensory eating experience.

The post Inhale Your Food: Scent-Emitting Fork Fools the Taste Buds first appeared on Gajitz.

Who doesn’t love blowing bubbles and then experiencing the pure visceral joy that comes from popping them? That is the idea behind SensaBubble, a multi-sensory mid-air display that combines sight, smell, and the satisfaction of popping bubbles. Designed by Professor Sriram Subramanian of Bristol University, the SensaBubble could be used for marketing, education, gaming, or a number of other applications.

The way the machine works is best described by the video above. Bubbles’ trajectories can be guided by the machine, then tracked so the SensaBubble system can project colors, words, or logos onto the fog-filled bubbles. An optional aroma can be added to the fog to provide another layer of sensory stimulation.

We would love to see this type of system used in everyday life. Imagine how fun it would be to get an email notification in the form of a floating bubble, then pop it with your finger to send it away. For those of us who feel like we’re overloaded with information and notifications all day, every day, this could be a far more relaxing way to get and then release those notifications.

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The human race can never seem to learn from its mistakes. Dubbed one of the worst inventions ever, Smell-o-Vision was a forehead-slap of an idea from the 1960’s. You would think time had buried this concept, but a product called Scentee has already made its way into humanity’s collective nostril.

A small smart phone attachment, Scentee features various scent cartridges that emit smells when you tap on your screen. The accompanying video seems to suggest ceasing actually eating food and instead “tasting and savoring food with your nose.” A good idea for dieters, perhaps, but it may just stimulate your hunger enough to make you actually crave those foods.

The available scents range from pleasant (rose, lavender, strawberry), to not-so-pleasant (corn soup, grilled short-ribs) to downright bizarre (buttered potatoes, beef tongue). It’s basically molecular gastronomy for your cell phone.

The post Smell-O-Phone Attachment Wants to Invade Your Nose first appeared on Gajitz.

Scent is the sense most closely tied to memory. When you catch a whiff of your mother’s perfume or the cigars your grandfather used to smoke, you’re instantly transported to a different time and place. We use photographs to record the visuals we want to preserve, but so far there has been no way to preserve aromas for future enjoyment. Amy Radcliffe created the Madeleine, a “scent camera,” to preserve those meaningful scents in the same way that we instantly and constantly record images.

The “scentography” camera works by placing a glass funnel over the object you’d like to record. A pump sucks the air across an odor trap which absorbs the particles that the smell is composed of. The apparatus, which looks like a retro science kit, is like a giant nose, according to Radcliffe. She envisions people capturing aromas at home and taking them to labs to be processed, kind of like we used to do for photographs. Instead of pictures, however, users would get a small vial of the precise odor along with a bronze disk listing the precise formula.

The post Scent Camera Captures and Preserves Your Favorite Aromas first appeared on Gajitz.