Beihang and Hong Kong City University jointly develop VR wearable odor generator to make virtual reality more "interesting".

CTOnews.com, May 10 (Xinhua) it has always been difficult to reproduce smells in virtual reality, but scientists may have found a solution: wearable odor generators.

In a recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and City University of Hong Kong introduced two devices, one is a wearable device that is directly attached to the skin under the nose, and the other is a soft mask. The former can produce two odors, while the latter can produce as many as nine odors. These generators contain scented wax that only needs to be heated for about 1.44 seconds to release the desired odor and only in a local area. The researchers were able to produce a total of 30 different odors, including rosemary, mojito cocktails, pancakes, pineapple, ginger and even durian.

The current virtual reality head display can simulate vision, sound and touch, but the virtual world is still tasteless. Part of the reason is that there is no elegant way to generate smells in clunky virtual reality devices. Ideally, the researchers say their technology could be used to create a more immersive user experience in video games or 4D movies and virtual teaching environments. They also come up with ideas such as using smell as another way to communicate information or trigger memory.

Of course, this is just one of the attempts to integrate smell into virtual reality. CTOnews.com notes that other companies are also working on this problem. Some have created scent magazines for Touxian, while others are trying to add scent to their neckbands. However, it will take some time for these products to be commercially available.