A new technology for scenting films is being developed in Russia

Russian company Illusion, supported by the National Technology Initiative (NTI), has developed a technology for watching films and videos with accompaniment of scents. Illusion Aroma technology synthesises and disperses scents from multiple interchangeable cartridges depending on the scene on screen. The development team included winners and runners-up from various technical and start-up competitions: WorldSkills Russia Junior, Kurchatov Tournament, and My First Business international competition, noted the Illusion team.

“We propose a scent track technology similar to a sound track, — explains project leader Ilya Finatov. — Scents are distributed throughout the film in the same way as sound. We plan to provide a lot of scents by mixing them together, like on a colour palette. We have analysed scenes from over a hundred films and highlighted the most frequent scents that are sure to be in the library. For example, the smell of coffee and fresh pastries.”

At first, the developers will add a track of scents using montage, but later they plan to train a neural network to recognise objects on the screen and add a track of scents automatically.

The project is now at the prototype stage: speakers with four drums of seven cartridges each. The smart device will connect to a computer or TV using Bluetooth.

According to representatives of Illusion, the cost of the device for the user is estimated at 50,000 roubles. The developers also plan to equip small cinema halls with the smart speaker and rent them out.

After presenting the speaker at the Ministry of Education and Science’s workshop “Archipelago 2121” later this month, Illusion will patent the technology, told NTI. Illusion plans to raise 20 million roubles from NTI and an equal amount from private investors to complete the development and mass production of the product, the developers said.

The developers themselves estimate the potential global market for aroma devices at $1.7 billion. However, all previous attempts to add scents to films have failed to produce any tangible results.

Experiments began in the middle of the last century: in 1960, Swiss engineer Hans Laube developed the Smell-o-Vision system, which was used for the screening of Jack Cardiff’s “Smell of Mystery”.

A tube from the main sprinkler was attached to the back of each chair in the Chicago theatre, and this introduced the scent at just the right moment. A total of 30 flavours were prepared, ranging from fresh pastries to gunpowder. The film Scent of Mystery assumed that the accompaniment would be part of the script, immersing the viewer in the atmosphere of the film. But the system was noisy, hampered the focus on the story, and the injection of scents directly in front of the viewer annoyed many.

One of the loudly bursting dot-com bubbles of the turn of the millennium — DigiScents with its ISmell device — was devoted to the massive idea of supplementing the internet with smells. The company has managed to attract $20 million in investment and the attention of many major corporations, from Procter & Gamble to Microsoft.

In 2013, Japan introduced ChatPerf, a device that connects to smartphones and transmits the necessary scents. A mobile app has also been created for it. The developers were more focused on accompanying the smells of the games, the device was connected via a port to the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The device has not been widely used.