A geeky blog about digital thinking, digital doing and technology

Augmented Reality currently taps into our audio and visual senses, but how long before it covers smell as well?

I’m a big F1 fan but can’t afford tickets to fly around the world and experience the sensational atmosphere. So imagine if I could bring the squeal of the tires and the smell of burning rubber, the sound and smell of rain as it hits the hot tarmac, into my living room…

Imagine you’re waiting in a stuffy airport lounge and you can be transported to the first day of spring, the smell of cut grass in the air, you pick a virtual flower and smell it’s scent…

Imagine you’re Skyping your best friend from New York and she’s cooking a bacon sarnie in the background and you can smell it too…

If we could decode the molecules of odour, similar to how we break down colour into wavelengths and sound into pitch and frequency then this could be achievable.

A perfumer creates a palette with thousands of molecules to create a scent, so if each molecule had a reference – just as we have RGB hex references for colour coding that form pictures on a screen – assuming the recipient had the equivalent hardware to release the combination of references creating the scent, then in theory we could send smells alongside pictures and images.

Let’s take it a step further, what if we could digitise taste? Imagine if you could script a cake and send it to a 3D printer…

Hershey’s and Barilla have already trialled printing using chocolate, cookie dough and sugar (you can read more here) so again, once we have the breakdown of molecules and a reference for each… you get where I’m going right?

I could also have the taste of burnt rubber on the tip of my tongue (tastes good with a cold beer I promise), create the taste of a Lindt chocolate bunny to go with spring and 3D print my bestie’s bacon sarnie.

Right, who’s got the HP?

Just imagine that rabbit is a strawberry cake…