Industry
Manufacturing
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Highlights
- From improving safety measures to enhancing our everyday lives, the evolution of “Digital Sense” holds immense potential for a better future.
- Despite significant investments and efforts made in these areas by multiple companies, widespread adoption in this area has not been common.
- With advancements in AI, loT is shaping up to create the perfect Digital Nose based on Digital Olfaction or Digital sense technology, where a mix of hardware and software with the use of AI to understand smell patterns can sense and detect smells and recreate them.
On this page
Overview
Digital sense – let’s explore its transformative potential in shaping the world around us
In today’s technological era, the advancements are primarily focused on enhancing hearing and seeing through digital experiences. The untapped potential of our other four senses – touch, balance, taste, and smell – presents vast opportunities for digital innovation.
Imagine the possibilities across various industries if these senses were to reach a higher level of digital maturity. From improving safety measures to enhancing our everyday lives, the evolution of “Digital Sense” holds immense potential for a better future.
History of digital smell
Discovering the fascinating journey of digital smell
The possibility of digital smell is in fact real. There has been some interesting work done in digitizing the senses. Dating back to 1950, the invention of Smell-O-Vision marked a significant milestone by introducing scent emission during movie screenings via air conditioning systems in correlation with the on-screen scenes. This sparked a competition from another system Aroma Rama, which was termed as the “Battle of Smellies,” showcasing early efforts to digitize olfactory experiences.
Challenges in scaling up
Understanding and addressing the challenges of digital scent technology.
Despite significant investments and efforts made in these areas by multiple companies, widespread adoption in this area has not been common. These systems encountered various limitations such as hissing sounds, faint smells in some areas, and mismatched smells, resulting in a decline in their usage. The biggest challenge lies in comprehending the complexity of how the human nose works and correlating this understanding into an artificial system that is capable of its implementation.
Potential of digital smell
Embracing the potential of digital smell brings us closer to a truly immersive digital world
The potential of digital smell spans across various industries, promising to make our lives better and safer. With the fusion of AI and loT, the evolution of Digital Olfaction or Digital sense technology is underway, to create a perfect “digital nose.” This innovative mix of hardware and software with the use of AI to understand smell patterns can sense and detect smells and recreate them.
Imagine the convenience of virtually experiencing the fragrance of a perfume from the comfort of your home or immersing yourself in digital environments through the sense of smell. Undoubtedly, the digital smell technology will bring us one step closer to bridging the gap between the virtual and physical worlds.
Use cases
By exploring digital scents across industries, we can change the way we interact with and perceive the world around us.
The use cases are numerous across various industries, below is illustration some of the use cases :
- Automotive: The perfect smell for a new car can be created to appeal to the buyer to take it from the test drive to home. With advancements in Digital Olfaction, smells can be created tailored to different markets and customer demographics.
- Food and beverage: The Digital Nose can be used to assess the freshness, ripeness, and quality of food products, especially dairy and meat products, reducing wastages, ensuring proper standards are maintained.
- Chemical processing: It can help in detecting gas leaks or other harmful chemical smells more effectively and work remediation in case of leakages.
- Agriculture: It can be used to monitor soil health, detect plant disease, and ripeness of the crops and farmers can manage their produce kept in the warehouses better.
- Manufacturing maintenance: It can be used along with acoustic and other sensors to detect unusual smells like burning smells and give insights into doing condition-based maintenance activities.
- Healthcare: It can be used to detect Odors which can be signs of diseases and can be used for personal as well as patient care.
- Perfumes and personal care: For Perfume manufacturing companies getting that perfect fragrance is key , lot of time is spent in research in testing the products, with Digital Olfaction the testing of fragrance can become faster as it will act as Digital Human nose, be more accurate and repeatable.
Conclusion
In the coming years, we are going to see continuous advancements in Digital Olfaction technology specially the use of AI to detect odors very similar to how our brain does this and ensure it’s use in the world in a more consistent manner at scale that will make our lives easier, better, and safer. There are far reaching impact across the industries ranging from Chemical, Food & Beverage, Retail, Manufacturing, Agriculture etc.
