If words and pictures aren't enough to convey messages now you have another option- send scented missives on the smartphone.
As crazy as it may sound, scented messages shared between smartphones are soon going to be a reality. A new technology developed by the researchers at Mixed Reality Lab in City University London is redefining the ways people communicate today. Technology is anything but a limited space for innovation and the new technique defines just that. For the first time ever, a scent was digitally transmitted from Paris to New York.
Christophe Laudamiel, a fragrance chemist in Paris, will go down in the books for sharing the first scented message with Harvard professor David Edwards and co-inventor Rachel Field at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Laudamiel sent a tasty aroma of chocolate and champagne using a specially designed smartphone and got a response of an aroma of a filling breakfast meal: a chocolate muffin, passionfruit juice, baguette with butter and cereal with strawberries and yogurt, CBS News reports.
The technical aspects that made transmission of scented messages possible are just as interesting. The researchers used a special smartphone called the oPhone and used an Instagram-like app called oSnap that allowed snapping a picture of something and tagging a selection of accompanying smells before sending. Researchers refer to each scented message as oNote, which requires an oPhone to decode.
According to an official webpage, oSnap is currently limited to food aromas from a set of 32 different cartridges called oChips, but the researchers plan to add over 300,000 unique combinations.
As the oPhone is still a working prototype, its creators have launched an Indiegogo campaign to fuel the research and get the final product in the hands of consumers. The technology will also be on display at the American Museum of Natural History for three weekends starting July 12. If the product can impress you enough, the Indiegogo site also lets you support the campaign by pre-booking oPhone DUO for $149, instead of its regular MSRP of $199 when it hits availability next year.
