ANN Based Approach to Integrate Smell Sense in Multimedia Systems

1. Introduction

The Multimedia systems are widely defined as Multi Sensory systems that convey information about the current state of the real world environment by congregating signals from several receptors in the ears, eyes, and other sense organs. The signals from one side of the body are sent through nerve fibers to the cerebral cortex on the opposite side of the brain, where they are perceived and interpreted in terms of our previous experiences, knowledge, and expectations. The five well known physiological systems that lie at the core of the human perceptual experience are Olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), visual (sight), auditory (sound), and perception of flavor (taste). Nonetheless, extensive research has been carried out to develop multimedia systems that can capture, store and reproduce sound and video with high quality (Paeda et al., 2008; Pfeiffer, Lienhart, & Efflsberg, 2001). However, there are the other three senses, smell, touch and taste that received less attention within the multimedia research area. These senses, in addition to sight and sound, can recreate an environment similar to the real world environment in particular the smell sense. This is because amongst the three other senses the smell is the only sense that can be perceived from a long distance.

Nonetheless, few odor-sensing tools have been proposed in limited applications. This is because of the complexity on designing olfactory system that can perceive different smells for humans with a variety of preferences. Table 1 presents some of these limited applications from the literature.