Want to celebrate your faraway friend with a sniff of fresh-baked birthday cake? Wake up a sleepy dorm daughter with the scent of coffee or oranges? It’s still a Jetsons-style dream for regular folks to send scents across the miles, but researchers at the Ohio State University are bringing us closer. They’ve developed a new system capable of detecting and transmitting smells across vast distances.

That system, outlined in a study released Wednesday, includes two different devices. First, an AI-powered e-nose detects and analyzes an odor. Then, it sends that scent data to a receiver called a Scentronic, which recreates the smell for someone else.

The team created a few versions of the Scentronic, including a wristband, a handheld model and a necklace. Each one is equipped with a five-channel scent distributor that uses a piezoelectric atomizer to spray the scents. (Piezoelectric refers to the use of pressure to create an electrical charge.) The entire device is powered by Wi-Fi and a cloud server that stores and transfers the scent data between devices.

The team used five scents: cake, beer, red wine, coffee and oranges. The e-nose detected one of those aromas, sent it to the Scentronic, and then the Scentronic reproduced the scent for the 16 people testing the system. Those people accurately identified all five scents.

Chunyu Yang, a doctoral candidate at OSU and lead author of the Scentronic paper, told CNET in an email that these scents were deliberately chosen because they represented familiar but distinctive smells people encounter regularly in the real world. 

Researchers suggest that this technology could be used in a variety of applications, including online shopping, to let people smell products before buying them. The technology could also be useful in healthcare diagnoses. A common symptom of COVID-19 is loss of smell, while migraines, pregnancy and other conditions can cause hyperosmia, a heightened sensitivity to smell.

There’s also an element of sheer entertainment.

“One exciting potential application is remote scent sharing,” said Yang. “For example, imagine enjoying a delicious meal and being able to share its aroma with a friend or family member who lives far away. This could add a whole new dimension to long-distance communication and make remote interactions more immersive.”

Another contender in digital scents

The first time a scent was transmitted over data was in 2014 with a product called the oPhone. That device used scent cartridges called oChips and an iPhone app to release 10-second aromatic bursts, called oNotes. The various cartridges mixed together to create approximately 300,000 distinct smells, allowing people in Paris and New York to send smell-o-grams to one another. 

Similar devices exist in the market, but they can’t analyze a smell. Users can choose only from a selection of predefined smells. 

That’s where the Scentronic stands out. The system can both analyze smells and send them.

“Scentronic uses a gas-sensor array combined with machine learning to recognize odors,” Yang said. “This approach allows us to develop a more compact sensing system that can be integrated with wearable devices.”

Another company, Osmo AI, is also using AI to digitize smells. Osmo AI uses gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to map the scent at the molecular level and then synthesizes the scent in a clear liquid cartridge that can be dispersed to recreate aromas.

Yang says that Osmo’s setup provides “detailed chemical information,” but that its equipment is much larger, whereas the Scentronic is designed for wearable use. 

Joe is a freelance journalist. It all started with a long-running affection for building his own PCs, which he did for the first time as a teenager. It evolved into a lifelong enjoyment of putting words on the internet about the subject. He’s written for CNET, PCMag, Mashable and SlashGear as a freelance writer, and worked as a Senior Editor at Android Authority for 10 years. When he’s not writing about tech and science, he’s learning the ins and outs of DIY home repair, gaming, playing his bass guitars and posting help on PC building and gaming subreddits. He is a staunch believer that orange juice should have pulp.

See full bio