AroMR

Decentralizing Olfactory Displays into the Environment for Olfactory-Augmented Experiences in Mixed Reality

2024
Yibo Wang, Ziqi Liu, Jiao Xue, Qi Lu

Emerging Mixed Reality (MR) platforms with spatially aware capabilities allow us to experience digital objects blended with the real world, yet current HCI researches neglect the rich potential that olfactory inputs hold for enhancing user immersion and interaction within immersive MR environments. Additionally, the interaction between olfactory rendering and the physical environment has not been thoroughly investigated.
We proposed a “field-centric” olfactory rendering strategy, designed and implemented the AroMR proof-of-concept prototype, and explored potential olfactory scenarios and design spaces within Mixed Reality.


Publication:

  • AroMR: Decentralizing Olfactory Displays into the Environment for Olfactory-Augmented Experiences in Mixed Reality(CHI EA ’25).



“Field-Centric”

Unlike traditional olfactory devices placed near the nose, the “field-centric” strategy disperses small olfactory units across various locations in the physical environment. Users can fully leverage the physical space to create a “scent network” and better utilize the airflow within the environment to interact with the scents emitted by the devices. This approach enables effects such as dispersion, flow, and wafting, which are difficult to achieve with conventional olfactory devices.


AroMR

The system consists of two parts: the olfactory display hardware and the mixed reality software.

We used the Meta Quest 3 and our self-designed and developed scent playback hardware to implement the AroMR proof-of-concept system.


Applications and Design Spaces

In the mixed reality software, we developed three typical scenarios to validate our design. These three scenarios effectively demonstrate some potential olfactory experiences utilizing the physical environment in MR and provide insights for exploring future olfactory scenarios and design space.



Building on the above exploration, we plan to organize an expert workshop to discuss additional application scenarios and design factors, with the goal of deriving a more comprehensive design space. We have conducted some preliminary considerations in this regard.