Digital Olfaction: What If We Could Capture, Share and Play with Smell?
From Virtual Worlds to Smellscapes: Rethinking How Humans Interact with Scent.
We can capture a photograph, record a sound and send both across the world in seconds.
But why can’t we do the same with smell?
Imagine sending the scent of a place to a friend, exploring a virtual environment through aromas, or using digital technologies to discover the olfactory identity of a neighbourhood.
At the Digital Olfaction Society World Congress 2026 in Tokyo, Professor Simon Niedenthal from Malmö University, Sweden, will explore these possibilities in his presentation:
“Playing with Smell: Digital Olfaction in Games, Immersion and Training.”
His research challenges an important assumption: digital olfaction is not simply about capturing an odour, converting it into data and reproducing it elsewhere.
Today’s technologies are still far from reproducing the complexity of human smell. Electronic sensors cannot yet capture the full richness of olfactory perception, and transforming their measurements into meaningful human experiences remains a major challenge.
But this technological gap also creates opportunities for new forms of interaction.
Professor Niedenthal’s work explores how scent can become part of physical gestures and immersive experiences, how affordable sensing devices can help communities investigate the smells of their environments, and how olfactory design can inspire new ways of imagining the future.
What if the future of digital olfaction were not only about reproducing smells, but about discovering entirely new ways to interact with them?
From games and virtual reality to environmental exploration and participatory design, this perspective connects technology with human experience, creativity and society.
Join us in Tokyo to discover how digital olfaction is moving beyond sensors and devices toward a richer understanding of what smell can bring to our lives.
Digital Olfaction Society World Congress 2026
December 9–10, 2026 | Tokyo, Japan
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