Scent and Creatures
touch
I have this idea inspired by Carita's touchrobot . In robots, the sense of touch is generated by an array of discrete sensors, each of which produce a single data point for the area they cover. With these sensors, they can touch and react to human's movements. It reminds me of another sense that is not so outstanding compared with vision and hearing and usually ignored by human-smell.
smell
For a long time, describing smell by words is a hard thing. It is quite challenging for me to search for the suitable pictures for different smells. How can one capture the scent of damp earth after rain or the fragrance of freshly washed hair in a picture? As a result, the sense of smell has been absent in the virtual life. However, scents play a crucial role in human social interactions. Research indicates that people are more likely to become friends if their body odors are similar[1]. Can robots help in this case?
First explored in 1982, research into duplicating the human sense of smell in robotic systems (aka electronic noses) has advanced by sniffs and bounds by replicating the biological system. Distinct smells are treated like scented fingerprints, each registering a varying relative value over an array of chemical levels, with no two smells being identical[2].
However, current research primarily focuses on the identification and analysis of odors. I am particularly interested in how to utilize stored odor digital signals and convert them back into scents, thus achieving interactive odor communication. Perhaps one day, when a friend is eating canned sardines while talking to you on the phone/through intelligent robot, sensors in her phone convert the odor into digital signals transmitted to your phone/robot, allowing your phone/robot to emit the same scent as hers:)
Reference:
[1] Inbal Ravreby et al. ,There is chemistry in social chemistry.Sci. Adv.8,eabn0154(2022).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abn0154
[2] http://nsl.caltech.edu/research:nose
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_scent_technology