The smell of freshly cut lavender – like so many fragrances, it has the power to conjure up a whole set of memories and feelings – imagine being able to share that with someone on the other side of the earth.
Sharing smell, but also touch, and even taste – that’s the vision of London university professor Adrian David Cheok, who has developed a range of devices he hopes will transcend the current limitations of online communication.
Today, our interaction with a smartphone or a computer is essentially audio-visual. He wants to involve all of our senses.
“Imagine you’re looking at your desktop, or your iPhone or laptop – everything is behind the glass, behind a window, you’re either touching glass or looking through glass. But in the real world, we can open up the glass, open the window and we can touch, we can taste, we can smell. So, what we need to do is we need to bring computers – the way we interact with computers – like we do in the physical world, with all of our five sens
