The Raspberry Pi-Powered Nosewise Olfactometer Adds Smell to HTC's Vive VR Hand Controllers - Hackster.io

Researchers astatine Sweden's Malmö University and Stockholm University person developed a device, which aims to marque virtual world adjacent much convincing: an unfastened root smell-o-vision olfactometer that provides in-game odors — convincing capable to thrust a wine-tasting game.

"I anticipation that the information that drawings and codification are openly disposable arsenic 'open source' volition pb to an accidental for crippled companies to commencement creating new, commercialized products for scent grooming utilizing the caller technology," says Jonas Olofsson, prof of science and task lead. "We judge successful unfastened science, that probe results should beryllium made disposable to the nationalist and that different researchers should beryllium capable to repetition our results. With the assistance of our research, others tin physique scent machines and research caller ways of utilizing scents successful games."

The hardware, developed by probe technologist Peter Lundén and dubbed the Nosewise Handheld Olfactometer, consists of a stepless valve olfactometer, designed for accumulation astatine debased cost, which attaches to HTC Vive manus controllers. Under machine control, utilizing a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board machine and an Adafruit 815 servo controller, the valves are opened to varying degrees and the odor provided to the idiosyncratic — reacting to what's happening in-game and mixing unneurotic halfway smells successful the aforesaid mode arsenic superior colors are mixed to marque a picture.

To beryllium the conception required a game, truthful the squad acceptable astir gathering 1 — successful which the subordinate is fixed the occupation of "tasting" vino samples. By lifting a vino solid to their nose, the wine's odor is mixed and blown towards the idiosyncratic with a instrumentality — and the subordinate has to place the aromas. "In the aforesaid mode that a mean machine crippled becomes much hard the amended the subordinate becomes," Olofsson claims, "the scent crippled tin besides situation players who already person a delicate nose. This means that the scent instrumentality tin adjacent beryllium utilized to bid vino tasters oregon perfumers."

There are non-gaming applications for the technology, too, which the squad recovered was capable to seizure galore of the characteristics of high-end probe olfactometers astatine a fraction of the cost: "For those who, for example, mislaid their consciousness of odor aft COVID-19 oregon for different reasons," Olofsson explains, "the caller exertion tin mean an accidental to regain their consciousness of odor with the assistance of game-based training."

It's not the archetypal clip we've seen a multi-chamber olfactometer utilized for virtual world gaming: earlier this twelvemonth a squad astatine the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the University of Technology successful Sydney utilized a akin strategy with six chambers to pump smells astatine subjects playing Capcom's Resident Evil 7 — uncovering that providing smells, which subordinate to the crippled satellite boosted the players' consciousness of spatial beingness portion heightening anxiousness during the game's creepier sections.

The team's enactment has been published nether open-access presumption successful the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies; operation instructions for the olfactometer and its Python root codification are disposable on the Center for Open Science website nether an unspecified unfastened root license.