Essence

Abstract

The sense of smell is perhaps the most pervasive of all senses, but it is also one of the least understood and least exploited in HCI. We present Essence, the first olfactory computational necklace that can be remotely controlled through a smartphone and can vary the intensity and frequency of the released scent based on biometric or contextual data. This paper discusses the role of smell in designing pervasive systems that affect one's mood and cognitive performance while being asleep or awake. We present a set of applications for this type of technology as well as the implementation of the olfactory display and the supporting software. We also discuss the results of an initial test of the prototype that show the robustness and usability of Essence while wearing it for long periods of time in multiple environments.

Dream engineering: Simulating worlds through sensory stimulation

“…It can be worn as a necklace or a clip and can release odors based on heart rate and brain activity ( Fig. 2 , Amores & Maes, 2017 ). The device is wireless and connects to physiological sensors as well as the Muse EEG headband; it monitors heart and breathing rate from sensors integrated into the device ( Amores, Hernandez, Dementyev, Wang, & Maes, 2018 ).…”

Promoting relaxation using virtual reality, olfactory interfaces and wearable EEG

“…Essence is a wearable olfactory display developed in previous work [10]. It has embedded computational capabilities, so that the frequency and intensity of scent release can be controlled via Bluetooth using a smartphone application.…”

“…For that reason, this article introduces a lightweight and wearable system integrating a virtual reality experience, an olfactory necklace [10], and a low-cost, wearable EEG headband to promote relaxation (see Figure 1). We believe that our system can contribute in the field of ubiquitous computing and wearable technology by integrating the already proven effectiveness of scent for relaxation and immersive virtual reality therapy techniques.…”

Breeze

“…We chose the chest as it provides better breath-sensing accuracy, given how much people move their wrists (e.g., typing, using a phone) during the day. Zeagler et al [61] indicated the upper part of the chest as a proper candidate to position wearables, and prior work proposes wearable pendants [3,13,46] to act as either input or output.…”

“…The breathing of the participants was covertly monitored with the pendant, as it was in constant contact with the chest during the experiment. The signals were streamed to the computer and synchronized with the beginning and end of each 40s trial using the lab streaming layer (LSL) protocol 3 .…”