Could Olfactory Displays Improve Data Visualization ?

olfaction displays (devices that output scented air) augment data visualization, that is, communicate information relevant to many fields?1 Perhaps incorporating underutilized modalities such as haptics (touch), olfaction, and gustation (taste) as data visualization aids is the next logical step to optimizing human information processing. It seems reasonable that adding the sense of smell to a virtual environment (VE) would enhance the environment’s presence or “realness.” Attempts have been made to include olfactory displays in VEs (for example, John Cater’s Deep Immersion Virtual Environment Laboratory at the Southwest Research Institute2), but most have been unsuccessful. One reason is the lack of a standard to represent and playback smells. Olfactory effects could play a crucial role in certain training environments, such as those for fire fighters and medical personnel.3 Current VEs include advanced visual and audio outputs, but smell is either very limited or absent. Very few studies focus on this subject, with most discussing ambient (wholeroom and long-duration) rather than specific (localized and short-duration) odors, which are relevant to data visualization and VR. At Princeton University, George Miller suggested that each of our sensory modalities has processing limits of seven (plus or minus two) information bits.4 Visualization Corner’s coeditor, Bowen Loftin, has mentioned in a previous installment that using additional modalities might circumvent the human information-processing limit and let us process an additional seven (plus or minus two) information bits for each modality utilized.1 Conceptually, the increase in data-processing capabilities via multimodal data visualization displays, along with the enhanced visualization experience provided by the multimodal environment, might provide a deeper, more sensitive, understanding of data otherwise unattainable through conventional visual and auditory displays. Another factor is that human olfactory capabilities differ by gender, age, number of odors used, whether odors mix, and the time it takes to detect an odor before automatically becoming desensitized or, worse yet, sickened by it.3