Improvement of miniaturized olfactory display using electroosmotic pumps and SAW device

Abstract

Recently, the study of using olfactory displays to release scents in virtual environment have been expanded. Our group have developed an olfactory display using electroosmotic (EO) pumps and a surface acoustic device (SAW) device. In this study, the improved olfactory display is described. The number of odor components was increased from 6 in the previous work to 8 whereas the size was further miniaturized so that it can be equipped on a headset. A visual-olfactory display system was also developed using the proposed olfactory display. The system can release scents in accordance with contents in the movie on Windows Media Player platform run on a PC. An experiment based on sensory test was performed to evaluate the capability to release scents of low volatile odorants within a short time and without odor remaining after the presentation.