Multi Aroma Shooter

As if sharing smells over your smartphone weren’t enough, now you are going to be able to smell aromas along with watching your favorite Youtube video!

The National Agency of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) announced the creation of this new USB aroma device, the Multi Aroma Shooter, on the 6th of this month.  This compact device was successful in instantly producing numerous smell sources to be synthesized into various other smells.

The Multi Aroma Shooter is a device 60 cm wide and 60 cm long, with several 1 mm holes on the upper side which are directed toward the nose of the person receiving the smell.

Inside, there is a cartridge which is able to store 6 types of smell sources.  Not only can you exchange cartridges but you can mix smell sources to make a wide variety of smells to reach the noses of viewers.

The device connects to your PC via USB and the timing of the aroma blast is controlled by a special software that allows the user to synchronize the smell with the video. Like any other video editing software, you are given a time scale where you can drag and drop icons representing various smells so they are emitted during specific times of the video.

NICT’s Universal Communications research  lab developed Micro Aroma Shooter in 2009, but it was limited to only one smell source and exchange of smell sources wasn’t possible.  It also took very complex programming to synchronize the smell with the video.

Multi Sensory Interaction System: MSenS, including the newer even more compact Micro Aroma Shooter, to be completed within the next year.

NICT is at work to improve the Micro Aroma Shooter and have set up a venture company, Aroma Join Co Ltd., with the aim to create a Multi Sensory Interaction System(MSenS) that would include a super compact version of the Micro Aroma Shooter.

They hope to have the system on the market within a year, and plan to use it with electronic displays of food, make up, and perfumes, as well as movies and TV.

It makes possible digital five sense entertainment! All of these things can be expected to  broaden the entertainment field by putting scent to picture. Just imagine how mouth-watering those YouTube food videos will be if you could actually smell what’s cooking!

Source: Internet watch impress