brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) (12/02/90)
In article <12079@milton.u.washington.edu> almquist@cis.udel.edu (Squish) writes : > What else do we need for VR? Sensory > I/O - we got sight and sound what about taste? smell? touch? Taste looks > kind of complex - well, at least I wouldn't want to put some funny tube into > my mouth with some guy standing over me saying, "Trust me (-:". Smell doesn't > appear to be TOO difficult (ie. a smell bank). The design constraints for a smell bank aren't overwhelming, but the complexity will cost a fair amount of mechanical parts and such, and the compounds atored in the bank will need to be replaced every so often, so it won't be cheap really soon. Anyhow, constraints: 1) smell is 7 dimensional (I've forgotten all the different axes, sorry), so you need seven odors in your bank. 2) time constants in the olfactory system are fairly short, on the order of a second or two at a guess, so you need to be able to start and stop a particular scent rapidly, and when changing, clear the old scent out. Sounds to me like a mask and some pumps. 3) Odor can be *very* distracting, so you need a mask anyway, to make sure no one else has to smell things. (Same problem as with voice input and output in open plan offices). 4) Ability to detect some odors varies widely between individuals, though I don't know if the differences are as extreme as with taste, where the ability to taste some things may be completely lacking in people without the gene for tasting them. Anyone know of any research in this area? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speaker-to-managers, aka Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekchips.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077