Smell and Taste-Based Interactions Enabled Through Advances in Digital Technology

Innovations around smell and taste interfaces are quickly emerging in the literature and practice, they include fully controllable sensory delivery mechanisms, wearable devices that allow portable applications, and novel systems that create digital smell and taste experiences. However, with the rapid development of such innovations, researchers and practitioners might forget current challenges in their design and evaluation, overlooking psychological understanding of human olfactory and gustatory perception. In this chapter, we review current advancements around smell and taste interfaces through a human-computer interaction lens. For each technology reviewed, we describe the type of stimulation (chemical, electrical, and thermal), the delivery mechanisms proposed as well as their key features and weaknesses. We then describe two interaction cases in detail for each of the two senses. Interaction case 1 focuses on the sense of smell and is based on the use of pressurized air smell delivery mechanisms. Interaction case 2 focuses on the sense of taste and is based on using acoustic levitation as taste delivery mechanisms. Both these case examples illustrate the potential for controlling different parameters, its novelty and capabilities, but also challenges. For each interaction case, we describe the evolution of different interfaces/devices that lead into a reflection on future directions of smell and taste stimulation aiming to provide researchers and practitioners with relevant parameters to design future olfactory and gustatory, and ultimately multisensory interfaces and experiences.