Managing Director Tan Sri Dato’ Azman bin Hj Mokhtar of the Government of Malaysia’s strategic investment fund, the Khazanah Nasional Berhad, is impressed with City talent in the heart of London’s Silicon Roundabout.
A delegation from the Government of Malaysia’s strategic investment fund, the Khazanah National Berhad, visited the Hangout on January 30th.
Located at the epicentre of London’s Tech City, the Hangout provides a unique working environment and incubation space for City University London academics, students and start-ups to foster relationships with investors in the area in order to get their businesses off the ground.
Khazanah Nasional Berhad promotes economic growth and makes strategic investments on behalf of the Government of Malaysia and is keenly interested in partnering with technology companies and products originating at City. With an investment portfolio comprising over 50 major companies in Malaysia and abroad worth £30bn, Khazanah is involved in a broad spectrum of industries.
Led by managing director Tan Sri Dato’ Azman bin Hj Mokhtar, the Malaysian delegation listened attentively to a variety of presentations and investment opportunities. The Khazanah managing director was impressed with the “high level of creativity” being nurtured at City.
These included a presentation on taste and smell actuation via mobile phone from Professor of Pervasive Computing, Professor Adrian Cheok and PhD students from his Mixed Reality Lab; BarPassOfficial (for payment and collection of drink orders via smartphone); Mashmachines (a new media player bringing together sound, lighting, and video into a single user interface); Popcord (an innovative lightweight mobile phone charger); TechCityNews (London’s leading tech sector news and analysis resource); Modafirma (a social commerce platform allowing emerging and independent fashion designers to reach and sell directly to a global audience); and AtomicDataLabs (a software and data management company building applications in large datasets).
Also in attendance were Pro Vice Chancellor for Research & Enterprise, Professor John Fothergill; Director of Enterprise, Dr Sue O’Hare; Dean of the School of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences and the School of Informatics, Professor Roger Crouch; Professor of Dependability and Security, Professor Kevin Jones; Manager of the London City Incubator and Hangout founder, Leo Castellanos; and, Andrew Humphries, co-founder of The Bakery.
The New Economy interviews Professor Adrian Cheok of City University London to find out about a new technology that will allow people to taste and smell through their mobile phones
Scientists are coming increasingly closer to developing technology that will allow us to use all our senses on the internet. Professor Adrian Cheok, City University London, explains how mobile phones will soon allow people to taste and smell, what the commercial benefits of this technology might be, and just how much it’s going to cost.
The online world: it’s all about the visual and sound experience, but with three other senses, it can leave us short. Studies have demonstrated that more than half of human communication is non-verbal, so scientists are working on ways to communicate taste, touch, and smell over the internet. I’ve come to the City University London to meet Professor Adrian Cheok, who’s at the forefront of augmented reality, with new technology that will allow you to taste and smell through a mobile phone.
The New Economy: Adrian, this sounds completely unbelievable. Have you really found a way to transmit taste and smells via a mobile device?
Adrian Cheok: Yes, in our laboratory research we’ve been making devices which can connect electrical and digital signals to your tongue, as well as your nose. So for example, for taste we’ve created a device which you put on your tongue, and it has electrodes. What those do is artificially excite your taste receptors. So certain electrical signals will excite the receptors, and that will produce artificial taste sensations in your brain. So you will be able to experience, for example, salty, sweet, sour, bitter – the basic tastes on your tongue – without any chemicals.
It’s a device that you can attach to your mobile phone, and these devices will emit chemicals
And with smell we’re going in a couple of tracks. One is using chemicals, it’s a device that you can attach to your mobile phone, and these devices will emit chemicals. So that means that with apps and software on your phone, you can send someone a smell message. For example, you might get a message on Facebook, and it can send the smell of a flower. Or if your friend’s not in a very good mood it might be a bitter smell.
So the next stage of that is, we’re making devices which will have electrical and magnetic signals being transmitted to your olfactory bulb, which is behind your nose. It’ll be a device which you put in the back of your mouth, it will have magnetic coils, and similar to the electrical taste actuation, it will excite the olfactory bulb using electrical currents. And then this will produce an artificial smell sensation in your brain.
Already scientists have been able to connect optical fibre to neurons of mice, and that means that we can connect electrical signals to neurons.
With the rate of change, for example with Moore’s Law, you get exponential increase in technology. I think within our lifetimes we’re going to see direct brain interface. So in fact what you will get is essentially, you can connect all these signals directly to your brain, and then you will be able to experience a virtual reality without any of these external devices. But essentially connecting to the neural sensors of your brain. And of course that also connects to the internet. So essentially what we will have is direct internet connection to our brain. And I think that will be something we will see in our lifetime.
The New Economy: So direct brain interface – that sounds kind of dangerous. I mean, could there be any side-effects?
Adrian Cheok: Well we’re still at the very early stages now. So scientists could connect, for example, one optical fibre to the neuron of a mouse. And so what it has shown is that we can actually connect the biological world of brains to the digital world, which is computers.
Of course, this is still at an extremely early stage now. You know, the bio-engineers can connect one single neuron, so, we’re not anywhere near that level where we can actually connect to humans. You would have to deal with a lot of ethical and also privacy, social issues, risk issues.
So essentially what we will have is direct internet connection to our brain
Now if you have a virus on your computer, the worst it can do is cause your computer to crash. But you know, you could imagine a worst case: someone could reprogram your brain. So we’d have to think very carefully.
The New Economy: Well why is it important to offer smell over the internet?
Adrian Cheok: Fundamentally, smell and taste are the only two senses which are directly connected to the limbic system of the brain. And the limbic system of the brain is the part of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. So it is true that smell and taste can directly and subconsciously trigger your emotion, trigger your memory.
Now that we’re in the internet age, where more and more of our communication is through the internet, through the digital world, that we must bring those different senses – touch, taste and smell – to the internet; so that we can have a much more emotional sense of presence.
The New Economy: What will this be used for?
Adrian Cheok: Like all media, people want to recreate the real world. When cinema came out, people were filming, you know, scenes of city streets. To be able to capture that on film was quite amazing. But as the media developed, then it became a new kind of expression. And I believe it will be the same for the taste and smell media. Now that it’s introduced, at first people will just want to recreate smell at a distance. So for example, you want to send someone the smell of flowers, so Valentine’s Day for example, maybe you can’t meet your lover or your friend, but you can send the virtual roses, and the virtual smell of the roses to his or her mobile phone.
At the next stage it will lead to, I think, new kinds of creation. For example, music before; if you wanted to play music, you needed to play with an instrument, like a violin or a guitar. But now the young people can compose music completely digitally. Even there’s applications on your mobile phone, you can compose music with your finger, and it’s really professional. Similarly, that will be for smell and taste. We’ll go beyond just recreating the real world to making new kinds of creation.
The New Economy: So will it also have a commercial use?
Adrian Cheok: For advertising, because smell is a way to trigger emotions and memory subconsciously. Now, you can shut your eyes, and you can block your ears, but it’s very rare that you ever block your nose, because you can’t breathe properly! So people don’t block their nose, and that means advertising can always be channelled to your nose. And also we can directly trigger memory or an emotion. That’s very powerful.
You want to send someone the smell of flowers, so Valentine’s Day for example, maybe you can’t meet your lover or your friend, but you can send the virtual roses
We received interest from one of the major food manufacturers, and we’re having a meeting again soon. They make frozen food, and the difficulty to sell frozen food is, you can’t smell it. You just see these boxes in the freezer, but because it’s frozen, there’s no smell. But they want to have our devices so that when you pick up the frozen food maybe it’s like a lasagne, well you can have a really nice smell of what it would be.
The New Economy: How expensive will this be?
Adrian Cheok: We’re aiming to make devices which are going to be cheap. Because I think only by being very cheap can you make mass-market devices. So our current device, actually to manufacturer it, it’s only a few dollars.
The PassWord radio programme is the UK’s only regular-hour long foray into the world of science and technology and not only tells you about the latest developments in the area but what those technologies mean to you.
The radio show is produced by Jane Whyatt, an award winning radio producer for the BBC, and presented by Peter Warren, an award winning investigative journalist who has worked for the BBC and the Sunday Times Insight team, Password is a fascinating insight into the high-tech world that we now all inhabit. To hear our weekly technology radio programme PassWord with Peter Warren tune in to London’s Resonance 104.4FM or www.resonancefm.com at 1530 GMT on Sundays. You can listen live to Radio Castle’s PassWord show on Mondays 1100-1200 online www.radiocastle.com.
*** The emergence of the cloud services, big data and the internet of things could be one of the greatest boons to humankind in history, enabling a paradigm-shift in quality of life. The bad news is that there could be a downside. The development has profound implications for us in terms of surveillance, privacy and consumer rights.
Will we humans remain in control of the process, or will the process begin to control us?
Where do human rights such as privacy stand?
Can or should a system of ethics be imposed on computer software and the internet of things itself?
Are existing legal frameworks and approaches able to adapt to the coming machine age?
What rules will govern the makers of the machines and the ‘Lords of the Clouds’?
In the midst of the complex and often exciting technical changes that are being developed to help the human condition, we should ensure that humanity itself is not left out of the equation. Netopia invites to an afternoon of discussion, report presentation and mingle.
Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz at the Mugaritz restaurant is working on a new digital app that lets users recreate one of the restaurant’s dishes on their screen before a device attached to the bottom of the phone kicks out the actual smell of the dish.
The device, called Scentee, is created by a Japanese company and it’s this technology that ProfessorAdrian Cheok from the City University in London harnessed while working with Chef Aduriz.
Scentee is basically a small tank that sits on the bottom of the phone. It’s controlled by an application and once triggered it emits a puff of odor. The idea is that you could one day send someone the scent of a coffee, great wine, or in the case of Mugaritz, actually smell a dish before you taste it.
Cheok says: “The Digital Food app opens up new vistas for people around the world who may not have had the opportunity to physically dine in the restaurant to virtually experience the real smell of gourmet food prepared by one of the world’s top restaurants and chefs. The revolutionary new device brings the sense of smell to mobile phone communications.”
The Scentee device was shown this week at Madrid Fusion, it can be ordered online but it’s hard to find an English or American seller – at the moment the Japanese arm of Amazon stock the devices for ￥3,654 ($35) and the cartridges at ￥525 ($5).The app can be downloaded for iPhone and Androidand the technology really is paving the way for a future of Scentagram style social media apps, supermarkets that let you smell the meals you’re buying and restaurants that trick diners by offering mixed scents and tastes at the table.
Cheok says the early future of the device will be driven by the adoption of private companies. He also notes that it could have wider applications away from the food and drink world, offering real medical benefits, saying that people with smell and taste disabilities could benefit from the technology: “Their experience of the world could be enhanced using technology. It could also be used by using familiar smells to trigger memories for elderly patients, reminding them to do things such as take their medication.”
Incoming message: Nice glass of rioja and a baked camembert.
Even though we are communicating in more ways than ever using online technology, we remain largely confined to the audiovisual when we do it. An app that has been on sale in Japan for some time aims to add smell into the mix.
Now that so many interactions are mediated by means of a screen, we find ourselves behind a window all the time. The virtual world of the internet does not permit us to use all of our senses; touch, taste and smell are off-limits.
The next frontier is allowing people to use all their senses to communicate over the internet and that’s what we’re trying to do at the Mixed Reality Lab, using the Scentee app. So instead of sending a picture of your dinner to a friend, you’ll be able to send them the smell. It can also be synced with your alarm clock to emit a whiff of freshly brewed coffee to get you going in the morning.
The app works when the user presses an icon on the smartphone screen. The app comes with a small tank which is plugged in to the smartphone and will light up and release a puff of scent is released from the top. The individual tanks are each filled with various food aromas so different smells can be sent.
Daily specials, straight to your nose
Given the close relationship between smell and taste, this technology has potential for those who want to change the taste of their food too. If you’re dieting, you might want to spray the smell of beef into the air when you’re eating a salad to trick yourself into thinking you are having something more substantial.
This kind of technology is already being taken up in the restaurant industry, where digital dining is becoming an increasingly popular way to deliver fine cuisine. Customers already get a mixed-media experience in some restaurants, such as when they listen to the sounds of the sea when eating fish.
My team of researchers is working with Mugaritz, a restaurant in Spain, to develop a digital food app that will enable customers to not only see the dishes on offer when they look at the menu but to be able to smell them too. So instead of only relying on traditional audio visual information to pick a meal, auxiliary technology bridges the gap between culinary creativity and customer experience.
We use Scentee to enable them to virtually prepare a recipe from Mugaritz and then smell the results when the aroma from the dish is emitted from the phone.
Private companies are likely to lead the charge in adopting them, as can be seen in the keenness with which restaurants are experimenting.
But there are also applications for health, such as for people with smell and taste disabilities. Their experience of the world could be enhanced using technology. It could also be used by using familiar smells to trigger memories for elderly patients, reminding them to do things such as take their medication.
A TRIPLE Michelin-starred restaurant in Spain is hoping to bring the concept of “Smell-O-Vision” to guests with the development of a new mobile app that will allow diners to get a whiff of their dinner from their smartphone.
Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz restaurant has teamed up with a Japanese technology company to work on a digital app that would diffuse the smell of the restaurant’s dishes from a small plug-in accessory that attaches to the phone via the earphone jack.
After calling up a dish on the screen, the diffuser called Scentee will release a burst of fragrance from a cartridge that simulates the aromas of the meal.
The concept was unveiled at gastronomy festival Madrid Fusion in January, reports Fine Dining Lovers, and is being developed with a professor from City University in London.
Not only would the mobile app offer prospective diners a preview of their upcoming dinner or a chance to revisit their meal, the digital mobile device could “open up new vistas” for foodies who may not be able to travel to the San Sebastian restaurant, Professor Adrian Cheok told Fine Dining Lovers.
The latest collaboration could also pave the way for future scentagram-style social media apps that could allow friends to send one another scented messages, recreate virtual meals, and allow grocery store shoppers to smell their food before purchase, Cheok added.
For now, the device is pitched as a 4D experience that could be used as an alternative alarm clock – think coffee aromas nudging you awake – and an added layer to the video gaming experience with the smell of gunpowder released every time players click the “fire” button.
Scentee is now available worldwide and ships to 120 countries. The small balloon-like device retails for US$35 (RM117) while cartridges are US$5 (RM16). Aromas that are already available include strawberry, lavender, coffee and rosemary. The app is compatible with both iOS and Android devices.
Chef Andoni Luiz Aduriz of Spain’s three Michelin-starred restaurant Mugaritz is developing a way for diners to smell his food via cellphone, the chef announced at Madrid Fusion last week. Aduriz is working with City University London’s professor Adrian Cheok to develop scents to be used with an add-on device that is operated by the app Scentee.
According to a press release, the app “permit[s] the user to virtually prepare a recipe from the restaurant; the aroma from the finished dish is then released from the phone.” Neat? Cheok tells Fine Dining Lovers that this kind of smellovision “opens up new vistas for people around the world who may not have had the opportunity to physically dine in the restaurant to virtually experience the real smell of gourmet food prepared by one of the world’s top restaurants and chefs.”
It’s unclear when the Mugaritz scents will become available, but the technology is around now. The Scentee device retails for about $35 and cartridges are $5, which, while a little pricey, is still cheaper than going to Spain. The app itself, available for iPhone and Android, is free.
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Virtual reality to become mainstream with Oculus Rift
Electric and driverless cars to take off
Smell communication by computer
Humans will increasingly fall in love with virtual characters
Stock trading will become crowd sourced, with the ability to follow thousands of traders in real time and copy their trades in real time based on performance
Brain project in the US will map the human brain to allow new breakthroughs such as neural implants
3D printing will become mainstream in the workplace and at home
