Could you smell the aroma of coffee just by looking at this picture? Soon, perhaps, you may be able not only to imagine it but actually to experience it. Researchers from the United States and China have developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to recognize smells and send commands over the internet to reproduce them. This could give digital communication a completely new dimension: the sense of smell.
Here’s how it works: special sensors analyze odor molecules, AI identifies the category, and a wearable device worn by another person releases the corresponding scent near their nose. In experiments, the system recognized individual smells with 73% accuracy and combinations of smells with about 71% accuracy. The scents tested included coffee, orange, cake, beer, and red wine.
For now, the device can choose only from scents prepared in advance; it cannot recreate any smell on demand. But imagine a virtual meeting over a cup of coffee, being able to smell a perfume before buying it, or experiencing the aroma of a dish from a menu. It seems this may be waiting for us in the near future!
